PR 4484 
.S62 
Copy 1 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO RHETORICAL THEORY 

Edited by Fred Newton Scott, Ph.D. 
Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan 



IX. 

The Critical Principle of the Reconciliation ol 
Opposites as Employed by Coleridge 



By 

ALICE D. SNYDER 



ANN ARBOR 
igi8 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO RHETORICAL THEORY 

Edited by Fred Newton Scott, Ph.D. 
Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan 



IX. 

The Critical Principle of the Reconciliation of 
Opposites as Employed by Coleridge 



By 

ALICE D. SNYDER 



ANN ARBOR 
1918 






Published by Authority of the 
Executive Board of the Graduate School 

OF THE 

University of Michigan 



GHft 

Author 
;?! I? 19a 



0— 



f^ 






PREFATORY NOTE 

When I began this study I intended to make a comparison of 
the ways in which the principle of the Reconcihation of Oppo- 
sites was used by the two critics, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and 
Thomas De Ouincey. Later I decided to devote the whole paper 
to Coleridge's applications of the principle, since they proved to 
be many and copious. The comparative work has, however, in- 
fluenced not a little my interpretation of the characteristic form 
given to the principle by Coleridge. 

Although the angle from which I approach the subject is de- 
fined in the introductory section of the paper, I may guard against 
misunderstanding by saying once for all that I am not making an 
investigation of the sources of Coleridge's criticism, a field in 
which much excellent work has been done by others. In this 
study I have confined myself to Coleridge's own writings, draw- 
ing mainly upon the collection of note-book jottings entitled Ani- 
ma Poetae, and the Literary Remains — especially the lectures on 
Shakespeare. 

A. D. S. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prefatory Note Ill 

Introduction i 

1 Statement of the Point of View i 

2 General Definition of the Principle 5 

3 Different Forms of the Principle 8 

Chapter I Some Aspects of Coleridge's Philosophical 
Thought in their Bearing on the Reconciliation of 
Opposites II 

Chapter II General Characteristics of Coleridge's Applica- 
tion of the Principle i8 

Chapter III The Expression of the Principle in Coleridge's 

Aesthetic Theory 27 

Chapter IV Coleridge's Application of the Principle to cer- 
tain Literary Problems 35 

1 Analysis of the Dramatic Character 37 

2 Problem of Tragi-Comedy 48 

3 Theory of Imitation 50 

4 Problem of Unity 53 

Conclusion 55 

Bibliography 57 



INTRODUCTION 

I. Statement of the Point of View 

Such an aesthetic principle as that of the Union or Reconcilia- 
tion of Opposites is likely to be most highly valued in an age 
that habitually talks in terms of the great fundamental opposites 
or antitheses, with keen consciousness of the element of opposi- 
tion, — that is, in a dualistic age. As Yrjo Hirn has indicated,^ 
summarizing Bosanquet's theory, the late eighteenth and early 
nineteenth century conception of art as that which reconciled or 
mediated between certain acknowledged opposites, was a most 
welcome conception to philosophers of the old dualistic school, 
"who had to struggle with what seemed to them an irreconcilable 
opposition between reason and the senses," and to the ethical ob- 
server caught in the meshes of the "narrow antagonism between 
body and spirit." To a less dualistic age this conception is of less 
significance. Quoting further from Hirn, with reference to the 
mediating aesthetic faculty or the judgment of taste : "In propor- 
tion ... as general science has been able to do away with the old 
dualism of higher and lower faculties, the judgment of taste has 
necessarily lost importance. In the development of monistic phil- 
osophy and monistic morals we may thus see one important fac- 
tor by the influence of which aesthetics has been ousted from its 
central position." Without concerning ourselves here with the 
general fate of aesthetics, we must at least agree that so much is 
being said, of recent years, about the relativity of opposition, 
criticism is so persistently nullifying all absolute lines of demar- 
cation, that there is some tendency to relegate all dualistic cate- 
gories to the past. Certainly the intellectual dualism that pre- 
ceded the nineteenth century's evolutionary theory is now fre- 
quently considered as something useful in its day but once and 
for all outgrown, and a corresponding judgment is passed upon 
all the metaphysical "reveling in ideas of the absolute"- that 
marked the early attempts to reconcile the terms of the dualism. 

This is doubtless as it should be : the particular form of the- 
orizing about opposites and their reconciliation that prevailed in 



^The Origins of Art, p. 2. 
' The phrase is Hoffding's. 



2 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

the early nineteenth century can never exactly recur; dualism, if 
by the term is meant the dualistic theory of a past period, may 
well have departed forever. But dualism conceived in the larger 
sense, as a principle of thinking, has suffered no such fate. With 
reference to the larger meaning of dualism, and its necessary per- 
sistence in one form or another, I accept the interpretation given 
in Professor Dewey's essay. The Significance of the Problem of 
Knowledge, and that in Professor Lloyd's sociological study. Con- 
formity, Consistency, and Truth. In explaining the inevitable per- 
sistence of dualism, Professor Dewey writes : "The distinctions 
which the philosophers raise, the oppositions which they erect, 
the weary treadmill which they pursue between sensation and 
thought, subject and object, mind and matter, are not invented 
ad hoc, but are simply the concise reports and condensed formu- 
lae of points of view and of practical conflicts having their source 
in the very nature of modern life, and which must be met and 
solved if modern life is to go on its way untroubled, with clear 
consciousness of what it is about. . . . More especially I suggest 
that the tendency for all points at issue to precipitate in the oppo- 
sition of sensationalism and rationalism is due to the fact that 
sensation and reason stand for the two forces contending for mas- 
tery in social life : the radical and the conservative. The reason 
that the contest does not end, the reason for the necessity of the 
combination of the two in the resultant statement, is that both fac- 
tors are necessary in action ; one stands for stimulus, for initiative ; 
the other for control, for direction."^ Professor Dewey has here 
translated dualism from the terms of metaphysics into those of 
sociology and psychology, but the dualism is still there ; it is a 
principle and a principle not only of thought but of life. Show- 
ing how, under evolutionism, dualism has come to be a "living 
principle" instead of a "given structure," Professor Lloyd writes: 
"The difference between mind and matter, subject and obje;t, 
spiritual life and natural life, is now a difference that means, not 
the existence of two separate and mutually exclusive worlds or 
orders or substances, but the wealth, the inexhaustible life, the 
rich potentiality, even the creative activity of one." After show- 
ing that this creative activity means a living unity instead of the 
uniformity that went with the old dualistic notion of creation, he 
continues : "Evolution, as it is at last coming to be appraised, has 
thus given us a real universe, not merely a uniform one. With 

^ Pp. 4-5. 



Introduction 3 

uniformity went, as suggested already, special creation and the 
medieval dualism; with unity, the free unity of a real universe, 
goes an always creative life and, with regard to the fate of dual- 
ism under the newer view, this, even like the creation, has been 
wonderfully magnified or aggrandized, having become — can I 
count on being understood? — a living principle of duality, a func- 
tion, instead of remaining in its quondam character of a single 
dual structure. Evolution has made creation general, and natural 
as general, and dualism functional, compounding both, one might 
almost say, to infinity, so that those who have seen in evolution 
only anti-creationalism and only anti-dualism have certainly been 
seriously misled by some one, perhaps, as is not unthinkable, by 
the evolutionists themselves."* 

It is as a fundamental principle of life and thought, as vitil 
to-day as it was a century ago, that I am regarding dualism in 
this study of the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites. And 
yet I am centering my attention on a writer who clearly belonged 
to the last century rather than to this, and to the very beginning 
of that century. There are two purposes which a study thus fo- 
cused might well have, and these two purposes must be distin- 
guished. 

On the one hand, an attempt might be made to find in the 
earlier expressions of the principle certain direct suggestions of 
its later scientific significance. With due allowance for difference 
in point of view, we might seek between the lines or within the 
parentheses of former-day criticism, support for the conclusions 
of modern scientific analysis, and even some hints of positive 
contribution. Following such a method we should first ask in 
what sense, according to contemporary aesthetic theory, art may 
be said to "reconcile opposites." We might analyze, with Miss 
PuiTer,^ the psychological effect of the structural oppositions 
found in the concrete work of art, — such oppositions as appear 
and are reconciled in spatial symmetry, plot conflict, and various 
forms of contrast. Or, considering the matter sociologically, we 
might ask in how far modern critics, following Tolstoi's lead," 
construe art as that transfer of feeling which finds its signifi- 



* Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. X, 
pp. 285-2S6. 

° The Psychology of Beauty. 
°What is Art? 



4 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

cance in reconciling social oppositions, — obliterating class distinc- 
tions through the creation of a mutual, understanding sympathy. 
Or, to follow a different line of modern thought, we might treat 
the matter as Furry' has done, from the standpoint of epistemol- 
ogy, and investigate the general function of the aesthetic experi- 
ence in reconciling eternally recurrent though ever-changing 
thought dualisms. And after some such investigation we might 
turn back to our earlier critics, hoping to find in their works 
passages which, when translated, would corroborate or even fur- 
ther develop our contemporary hypotheses. 

On the other hand, the purpose of such a study might be to 
expound some expression of the principle primarily as a product 
of its own age. In this case we should keep to the historical 
method, assuming that the careful study of an idea as related to its 
own time may throw as much light on the significance of its later 
development as would a direct translation into modern termin- 
ology. 

The historical method is the one that I have adopted in this 
study. I am not translating, but am studying Coleridge's own lan- 
guage, and asking what it means that he used just such lang;iage. 
I am not asking, primarily, how much truth of an absolute, scien- 
tific kind we can cull from out the mazes of his critical specula- 
tions, but rather, accepting all the mazes, I am studying his spec- 
ulations in their own early nineteenth century form, and am ask- 
ing what it means that Coleridge thought and talked about art 
and literature as he did. 

Further, since I am assuming that the form of thought is re- 
lated just as organically as the content to the vita! interests of a 
period or an individual, my method is to some extent logical or 
formal. The Reconciliation of Opposites taken as a fundamental 
thought principle, appearing now in one form and now in an- 
other, has a formal history well worth investigating. In studying 
Coleridge's use of the principle I am not so much concerned 
about the exact content of his formulae, the terms of his anti- 
theses, as might be expected. I am more interested in analyzing 
their logic, — in trying to get at the significance of antithesis as a 
general form of art definition, and in studying the different forms 
of opposition and reconciliation involved in Coleridge's critical 
concepts. 



' The Aesthetic Experience. 



Introduction 5 

2. General Deeinition oe the Principle 

The Reconciliation of Opposites, as an aesthetic principle, can 
perhaps be best defined and its general logical implications best 
indicated by carefully distinguishing it from a certain superfi- 
cially similar formula which, in English criticism, seems to have 
been its logical as well as its chronological forerunner. Long be- 
fore the German philosophers and their English disciples began 
speculating on the reconciliation of opposites involved in the Ab- 
solute and in Art, even in the sixteenth centuiy beginnings of 
English literary criticism, we find writers defining poetry m a 
way that strangely suggests this philosophic formula, namely, as 
a combination of Instruction and Delight. Gregory Smith gives 
typical examples of this formula in his discussion of the sixteenth 
century apologists ; he writes as follows : "In their rough defini- 
tions of the purpose of Poetry the defenders are careful not to sub- 
ordinate the dtilce to the utile. The end of Poetry is, with Sidney, 
'to teach and delight.' 'It is well known,' says Nash, 'that delight 
doth prick men forward to the attaining of knowledge, and that 
true things are rather admired if they be included in some witty 
fiction, like to pearls that delight more if they be deeper set in gold.' 
Webbe's plea, which he borrows from Horace, is generally accept- 
ed. 'The perfect perfection of poetry is this, to mingle delight 
with profit in such wise that a reader might by his reading be a 
partaker of both.' "^ 

There is certainly a similarity between this Instruction-De- 
light formula and the later definitions that make art the union of 
now one and now another pair of opposed elements. Yet logi- 
cally the definitions are quite distinct and imply vastly difi;erent 
attitudes toward the object." According to the earlier definition 
it was the virtue of poetry that it combined two admirable prop- 



* Elizabethan Critical Essays, Vol. I, p. xxv. Cf. Spingarn on Sidney's 
Defence: "In regard to the object, or function, of poetry, Sidney is at 
one with Scaliger. The aim of poetry is accompHshed -by teaching most 
delightfully a notable morality; or, in a word, by delightful instruc- 
tion. Not instruction alone, or delight alone, as Horace had said, but 
instruction made delightful ; and it is this dual function which serves 
not only as the end but as the very test of poetry." (Literary Criticism 
in the Renaissance, pp. 270-271.) 

" For the analysis of the principle of antithesis that follows the writer 
is indebted to sundry articles and lectures by Professor A. H. Lloyd, es- 
pecially the article entitled The Logic of Antithesis, Journal of Philoso- 
phy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. VIIL pp. 281-289. 



6 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

erties frequently sundered, sometimes loosely conceived as op- 
posed. But Instruction and Delight were in no sense logical op- 
posites — Poetry was not the logical reconciler of opposites. There 
was no real antithesis, no principle of opposition. 

Nor should we expect to find real antithesis in these earlier 
definitions. The critics were altogether too much interested in 
one of the terms of the definition, Instruction, to use the form of 
antithesis, opposition and reconciliation. For in all antithesis 
there is balance, hence a feeling of indifference towards the teims 
of the antithesis. One term is as good as the other, and, in as far 
as they are conceived as real opposites, or the mutually exclusive 
terms of some universe of discourse, no considerable value is at- 
tached to either. For the fact that concepts of any sort are 
placed in antithesis means, logically, that the value of their tra- 
ditional meanings as separate concepts is being superseded by 
some new undefined value that is vaguely felt to embody, hence 
reconcile, the two opposites ; and through this new, larger con- 
ception, the individual terms are acquiring new meanings, new, 
undefined values, — are being raised to the new plane of the recon- 
ciling concept."' It follows that we use antithesis in a definition, 
that is, define an object as the union of necessarily opposed con- 
cepts, only when our prime interest is in the new undefined value 
that inheres in the object and is both rendering indifferent and 
transforming the terms of the antithesis. 

The attitude that gives rise to the antithetic definition is not 
the attitude that characterized the sixteenth century apologists for 
poetry. ^^ In the English criticism that issued in the Instruction- 
Delight definition of poetry we find that the interest was centered, 
the real values inhered, in the terms of the definition, in the ele- 
ments of instruction and delight as these had been traditionally 
understood, rather than in poetry as a new, transforming con- 
cept. It was the function of poetry that was being considered, and 
this meant to the critics the relation of poetry to certain already 
defined elements of life ; it was these well defined elements — one 
of them in particular, in which the interest centered. Poetry was 
not standing in its own right in an aesthetic realm ; it was being 
subordinated to other realms, primarily to that of morality. "The 



'° Lloyd, The Logic of Antithesis. 

" In the following survey I am simply calling attention to certain char- 
acteristics of early English criticism that are clearly defined by Gregory 
Smith in the introduction to his Elizabethan Critical Essays and by J. E. 
Spingarn in his Literary Criticism in the Renaissance. 



Introduction 7 

first problem of Renaissance criticism," Professor Spingarn 
writes, "was the justification of imaginative Hterature. The ex- 
istence and continuity of the aesthetic consciousness, and perhaps, 
in a less degree, of the critical faculty, throughout the Middle 
Ages, can hardly be denied ; yet distrust of literature was keenest 
among the very class of men in whom the critical faculty might 
be presupposed, and it was as the handmaid of philosophy, and 
most of all as the vassal of theology, that poetry was chiefly 
valued. In other words, the criteria by which imaginative liter- 
ature was judged during the Middle Ages were not literary cri- 
teria."'- And the period of English criticism represented by Sid- 
ney's Defence, the period with which we are here concerned, 
was, he explains, "prepared for by the attacks which the Puritans 
directed against poetry, and especially the drama."''' Discussing 
the same period, Gregory Smith notes "that the greater forces 
which stimulated this literary defence were themselves unliter- 
ary."''' The justification, in order to meet such attacks, was nat- 
urally forced to take its stand on extraneous grounds. 

To put the matter more formally, Instruction and Delight 
were not the logical opposites of any universe of discourse. 
Poetry had not come into its own completely enough to serve as 
such a universe. It could not stand in its own self-sufficiency and 
perform the function of transvaluation that belongs to the recon- 
ciling concept of any antithesis. The very fact that the actual 
contest of the critics was so bitter, indicates that the concepts 
under consideration, — Instruction, Truth, Morality, and Delight, 
were still so narrowly conceived that they were susceptible merely 
of a compromising combination, not of that real reconciliation 
with their opposites which means trans formation. '° 

The formula of the Reconciliation of Opposites, as distinct 
from any formula of combination, is one that could come into 
use only after a somewhat dogmatic morality had given place to 
aesthetic and philosophic bases of criticism. It manifests a spec- 



" Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, p. 3. 

" Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, p. 265. 

" Elizabethan Critical Essays, Vol. I, p. xiv. 

"Just as the formal definition shows an inorganic combination of the 
elements Instruction and Delight, so more concrete analysis reveals an 
essentially inorganic conception of the relation between the two. Nash's 
figure of the gold setting and the pearl, cited above, is representative of 
the general attitude. The insistence upon an allegorical interpretation of 
literature is an instance of the same inorganic dualism. 



8 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

ulative interest in art as art. The early nineteenth century had 
such an interest, and we find in certain instances that, in the face 
of this new fascinating value — Art, or the Absolute that it ex- 
presses — almost everything else that was considered at all in 
this connection was reduced to that state of relative indiflference 
characterizing the formula of antithesis. Rest and Motion, the 
Vital and the Formal, Man and Nature, all were the logically 
opposed constituents of the definition. And yet in as far as they 
were reconciled, their meanings were raised (through the sense 
of this new value) to a higher plane. The principle signified an 
almost supreme interest in art. However great the social pnd 
economic unrest may have been, and however this may have ex- 
pressed itself, there was to be found in the early nineteenth cen- 
tury a speculative and idealistic philosophic consciousness that 
had transcended moral and religious conflicts and could accept 
the universe as a whole. And for this consciousness art had be- 
come as big as the universe. The wholesomeness of the attitude 
involved may be questioned. Abstract speculation was frequently 
carried too far, and in the aesthetic field, as Kuno Francke sug- 
gests in his discussion of Schiller's valuation of art, the "apotheo- 
sis of art" may have done "injustice to other forms of human 
activity."'" But. unwholesome or not, the fact remains ; the period 
evinces such an interest, and this is what we find expressed in the 
principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites. 

3. Different Forms of the Principle 

If the logical investigation of Coleridge's antitheses is to be of 
anything but the most general sort it will be necessary at the out- 
set to consider carefully two difi^erent kinds of opposition, both of 
which we find figuring' in nineteenth century philosophic and aes- 
thetic concepts. 

To formulate art as the union of such logical opposites as Rest 
and Motion, the One and the Many, or Man and Nature — let the 
metaphysical terms be what they may — is obviously a very dif- 
ferent thing from saying that opposition, symmetry, or contrast 



""I shall not here dwell on the question whether this apotheosis of art 
does not do injustice to other forms of human activity. What led Schil- 
ler to these, we should he inclined to say, over-statements, was probably 
the absence in the Germany of his time of a healthy public life which 
could have taught him the value of any kind of strenuous productive 
work." (German Ideals of Today, pp. 81-2.) 



Introduction g 

is a fundamental structural principle of art, or even from saying 
as De Quincey says of the Art of Conversation, that the essence 
of the matter lies in "the electric kindling of life between two 
minds."'" In the one case there is an antithesis consisting of 
terms that are logically opposed, that is, terms whose meanings 
are opposed; there is no attempt to reflect any structural oppo- 
sition evident in the work of art. In the other case there is op- 
position without a doubt, but the terms have no logically opposed 
meanings, — they are identical units opposed only spatially ; the op- 
position is the scientifically real opposition of the actual structure. 
The difference is clearly expressed in the following passage taken 
from an essay of Eucken's : "Contradiction reveals a totally dif- 
ferent sort of relationship from any which is to be seen in the 
mechanical realm. It is not a collision of spatial elements but an 
incompatibility of content. This brings us to the concept of con- 
tent, which is absolutely incomprehensible from the mechanical 
point of view."'* We have the logical antithesis in which the 
terms have meaning or contents, and the mechanical opposition 
which is merely a space or direction formula but for that very 
reason reflects more directly than the other the structural oppo- 
sition revealed in scientific analysis.'" 

It may be questioned whether these two sets of formulae are 
really forms of the same principle, but the question must be an- 
swered in the affirmative, for the mechanical formula has the 
same general logical significance that belongs to logical antithe- 
sis. It was found in the general analysis of antithesis that a 
certain balance, indifference, and even identity of terms is an es- 
sential characteristic ; in the process of being brought together in 
antithesis the terms are losing their old meanings, being rendered 
indifferent and in a sense identical. Now in the mechanical for- 
mula the terms have completely lost their meanings and are 
identical, — equal, and opposed only in direction. The formula 
gives the limiting case of a process that is going on in all antithe- 
sis. Further, it was found to be characteristic that the terms are 
not simply losing their old meanings but are through the media- 



" Works, Vol. X, p. 268. 

" Main Currents, p. 183. 

" Such a concept as De Quincey's of the opposition between two 
minds cannot be viewed as a piece of structural analysis, since it is the 
creative process instead of the finished product that is being analyzed, but 
the process itself in this case is being scientifically or mechanically con- 
strued. 



lo The Reconciliation of Opposites 

tion of some new value being transformed and thus acquiring new 
meanings. Here again the logic of antithesis holds in the mechan- 
ical case, for it must be recognized that we construe the universe 
in terms of balanced elements or forces, that is, construe it me- 
chanically, according to the general formula. Action - Reaction, 
only when we are contemplating it as means to some end, when 
we are exploiting present values in the interest of some new 
value about to be created."" Thus the mechanical antithesis also 
implies a process of transvaluation. 

As a matter of fact in English criticism the two forms may be 
seen merging, the one into the other. It is no far cry from the 
formula of the union of the One and the Many, or of the Sub- 
ject and the Object, to such a formula as is found in Coleridge's 
analysis of intelligence, taken over from Schelling. Intelligence 
is, he writes, "an indestructible power with two opposite and 
counteracting forces, which, by a metaphor borrowed from as- 
tronomy, we may call the centrifugal and centripetal forces. The 
mtelligence in the one tends to objcctize itself, and in the other 
to knoTV itself in the object."-^ As soon as the terms of the anti- 
thesis have thus become forces opposed merely in direction, they 
are reduced to the concept of scientific or mechanical opposi- 
tion, though it is to be noted, the concept is used here frankly as 
an analogy only. 

It is evident that in studying Coleridge's use of the principle 
of the Reconciliation of Opposites it is not enough to consider the 
general logical implication of the principle. There are two typi- 
cal forms of the principle, the metaphysical and the mechanical, 
and it is necessary to distinguish between the two. since, as has 
been suggested already and will be further indicated later, they 
dififer widely in significance. 



""I am here using Professor Lloyd's interpretation of Kant's cate- 
gory of reciprocity. 

" Works, Vol. Ill, p. 350. 



CHAPTER I. 

Some Aspects of Coleridge's Philosophical Thought in 

Their Bearing on the Principle of the 

Reconciliation of Opposites 

Coleridge's philosophical sympathies were such as to make 
him particularly hospitable to the principle of the Reconciliation 
of Opposites. Although fundamentally an eclectic, hence quite in- 
consistent, he yet had certain fairly definite leanings which played 
no small part in determining his attitude toward this method of 
defining art. From a number of casual remarks it is evident that 
he was strongly impressed with the necessity of always empha- 
sizing the positive rather than the negative. He makes a memo- 
randum — "Always to bear in mind that profound sentence cf 
Ivcibnitz that men's intellectual errors consist chiefly in denyiny. 
What they affirm with feeling is, for the most part, right — if it be 
a real affirmation, and not affirmative in form, negative in real- 
ity."^ "Great good," he exclaims, "therefore, of such revolution 
as alters, not by exclusion, but by an enlargement that includes 
the former, though it places it in a new point of view."- Hence in 
his philosophizing he could not stop short of some positive prin- 
ciple.^ But for one so steeped as Coleridge was in the atmos- 
phere of mutually conflicting concepts this principle could not be 
one of easy-going optimism, — it must recognize the opposition 
even in the act of transcending it. 

Moreover, even as he was averse to ultimate negation and 
contradiction, so he was to any form of division, signifying, as it 
nmst, mutual exclusion.* Distinction he would allow, but never, 
as a fundamental philosophical fact, division. "O ! the power of 
names to give interest," he exclaims. "This is Africa ! That is 
Europe ! There is division, sharp boundary, abrupt change ! 
and what are they in nature? Two mountain banks that make a 
noble river of the interfluent sea, not existing and a>cting with dis- 
tmctness and manifoldness indeed, but at once and as one — no 
division, no change, no antithesis !"^ Anything of ultimate value 



^ Anima Poetae, p. i47- 

"A. P., p. 169. 

'Cf. Wylie, Evolution of English Criticism, pp. 196-197. 

*Cf. Biographia Uteraria, ed. Shawcross. Vol. I, p. LXXXVII. 

°A. P., p. 71. 



12 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

must for Coleridge consist of elelnents which, while they may be 
distinguished, are yet capable of real fusion. And it is this kind 
of reality which expresses itself in the Reconciliation of Opposites 
as it could not in any mechanical sum of similarly conceived parts, 
in any of the theories of the atomists that he so despised. 

Of even more immediate significance than such specific philo- 
sophic tenets, is Coleridge's general method of philosophizing, hi-j 
attitude towards speculative thought. For there is that in Col- 
eridge's criticism which inevitably brings the investigator back, 
sooner or later, to a study of the man's philosophical tempera- 
ment. We can partially explain the strength of his critical ef- 
forts as the outgrowth, though a somewhat reactionary one, of 
earlier English criticism," or as the fairly direct assimilation of 
German philosophy. We can partially explain their weakness as the 
result of the peculiarly difficult situation that had to be faced." But 
in spite of all definable historic causes and sources, probably no 
writer has attempted a thorough-going discussion of Coleridge's 
criticism without finding that he was having to deal to an un- 
wonted extent with a personality. Certainly it is next to impossi- 
ble to consider Coleridge's use of the principle of the Reconcilia- 
tion of Opposites except in the light of his philosophical temper- 
ament. It matters little which way we put it : the temper of his 
speculative thinking strongly colored his use of this principle ; or, 
the principle had so insinuated itself into his thinking that it to 
some degree determined his philosophical temper. The consid- 
eration of the one is practically essential to an interpretation of 
the other. 

There would be little use in attempting any really new analy- 
sis of Coleridge's temperament. The subject has been dealt with 
by many critics, and their efforts have resulted in not a few most 
happy characterizations. It is simply necessary to call to mind 
certain pertinent aspects of the matter. 

Critics have never hesitated to take Coleridge's word for it 
that he sought refuge from life and finally even from art in a 
somewhat isolated world of metaphysical speculation.** The evi- 
dence is only too patent. First principles and the Absolute are 
accepted as his prime interests. Even his intuitive recognition 
of the scientific, evolutionary trend that thought was taking has 



° Wylie, Evolution of English Criticism, pp. 167, 200. 
' Wylie, Evolution of English Criticism, pp. 202-203. 
"See Brandl, Life of Coleridge, p. 278. 



Coleridge's Philosophical Thought 13 

a strongly metaphysical, absolutist cast to it, which resulted in 
strange incongruities. As Leslie Stephen has noted, "How the 
law or laws of an organism are to be determined by some tran- 
scendental principle, overruling and independent of experiences, is 
just the point which remains inexplicable. He seems to appre- 
ciate what we now call the historic method. He uses the sacred 
phrase 'evolution,' which is simply the general formula of which 
the historic method is a special application. But we find that by 
evolution he means some strange process suggestive of his old 
mystical employment."" 

Though a metaphysician himself, Coleridge was well aware 
that metaphysics was under fire. As Pater so aptly says,^" he 
was one of those spirits of a transition era who feel the change 
everywhere and yet do not abandon themselves to it. Taking to- 
ward his own philosophizing the critical rather than the naive 
attitude, he went to some trouble to justify his metaphysics in 
the face of the charges, superficial as they were, perpetually be- 
ing brought against philosophy by an orthodox theology." More- 
over, he was conscious, as no student of Kant could fail to be, of 
a more fundamental criticism.^- He himself recognied the dan- 
gers of two kinds of pathological thinking. On the one hand, he 
cautions men about the over-intellectualized solutions of formal 
problems, that lack any vital suggestion. "A metaphysical solution, 
that does not instantly tell you something in the heart is grievously 
to be suspected as apocryphal."" On the other hand he is keenly 
conscious of the imwholesomeness of an over-emotional meta- 
physics that lacks the virility of the practical. "Metaphysics," 
he writes, "make all one's thoughts equally corrosive on the body, 
by inducing a habit of making momently and common thouglit 
the subject of uncommon interest and intellectual energ)'.'""' 
"The thinking disease is that in which the feelings, instead cf 
embodying themselves in acts, ascend and become materials of 
general reasoning and intellectual pride. . . . Ascent where 
nature meant descent, and thus shortening the process — viz., feel- 
ings made the subjects and tangible substance of thought, in- 



° Hours in a Library, Vol. Ill, p. 366. 
'° Appreciations, pp. 65-66. 
"A. P., p. 42. 

"On Coleridge's attempt to justify liis metaphysics, see Sliairp, Stud- 
ies in Poetry and Philosophy, pp. 174-175. 
" Letters, p. 428. 
" A. P., p. 23. 



14 Tlic Reconciliation of Oppositcs 

stead of action, realizations, things done, and as such externalized 
and remembered. On such meagre diet as feelings, evaporated 
embryos in their progress to birth, no moral being ever becomes 
healthy."^^ 

Here Coleridge diagnoses his own case ; for in spite of the 
fact that he recognizes the evil, he does himself err, and his error 
lies in giving to metaphysics too much rather than too little emo- 
tional significance. Abstract as they are, his writings are re- 
plete with a sense of metaphysical values. Whatever others may 
say, to Coleridge it was enough to find in the world of everyday 
experiences, in the waterfall on the mountain, or the wood fire 
in his study, rest, motion, unity, individuality, and all the other 
mysteries of the metaphysicians' world. In the philosopher's 
concepts he feels the miracle of the universe. "Time, space, dura- 
tion, action, active passion passive, activeness, passiveness, reac- 
tion, causation, affinity — here assemble all the mysteries known. 
All is known-unknown, say, rather merely known. All is un- 
intelligible, and yet Locke and the stupid adorers of that fetish 
earth-clod take all for granted."^'' He most assuredly lacks, as 
Pater tells us, that "certain shade of unconcern . . . which 
may be thought to mark complete culture in the handling of ab- 
stract questions."^' 

As already implied, Coleridge's writings are rich in illustra- 
tion of his abstract philosophical principles and concepts. And 
yet there is nothing more baffling to any attempts at constructive 
thought than just this sort of promiscuous illustration that Col- 
eridge delights in. The principle, the mystic concept, is discov- 
ered in some concrete manifestation — it matters not what ; and 
the joy of the discovery absorbs all the vital force which might 
serve to suggest some practical application, or at least some sys- 
tematic working out of its bearings along a particular line." There 
is a complacent, almost sentimental finality about the experienc?, 
that is rather depressing to one who does not share in the meta- 
physical ecstasies. This exuberance with which he greeted any 



''A. P., pp. 169-170. 

"A. P., p. 185. 

" Appreciations, p. 69. 

"See Symons, The Romantic Movement, p. 125: "With so little 
sense of reality in anything, he has no sense of the reahty of direct emo- 
tion, but is preoccupied, from the moment of the first shock, in exploring 
it for its universal principle, and then flourishes it, almost in triumph, at 
what he has discovered." 



Coleridge's Philosophical Thought 15 

and every concrete illustration of a principle is simply one aspect 
of that general receptivity of temperament that is frequently 
commented upon. He found his illustrations quite uncritically 
just as he habitually assimilated the thoughts of other writers 
without any of that close scrutiny which would have rendered 
impossible his gross violations of the law of proprietorship. 

'Receptive,' 'discursive,' 'expanding,' 'comprehensive,' 'gen- 
eral,' 'metaphysical,' — such are the epithets applied to his philo- 
sophical nature ; and, as we should expect, his philosophizing is 
frequently characterized as 'verbal.' To quote at some length 
from John M. Robertson's essay on Coleridge : "His facility of 
phrase often led him into mere mock solutions. He gave a su- 
perfluous encouragement to verbalism in philosophy all around. 
His faculty being one of verbal expression, he tends to make ver- 
bal exercise take the place of investigation."^" "Not even the 
verdict of Mr. Lowell can put his status as a philosophical critic 
beyond question ; for it is precisely in philosophical generaliza- 
tion that Mr. Lowell himself is least satisfying. He had too 
much predilection to Coleridge's own intellectual sins of develop- 
ing his philosophy uncritically from his sentiments, and of find- 
ing in a play of words an account of the constitution of things."''' 
And, he continues, — "A less serious fault, arising from his ver- 
bal endowment and his defective hold on actuality, is Coleridge's 
way of repeating or dwelling at serious length on verbal distinc- 
tions even where they are in themselves justifiable."-^ 

Coleridge had, indeed, a very real concern for words. To him 
they were not mere arbitrary symbols of vital meanings, but had 
a vital reality of their own which to some extent justified ver- 
balism. He recognized the mechanical element, and regretted the 
failure on the part of the multitude to find in words anything 
more. "Not only words, as far as relates to speaking," he notes, 
"but the knowledge of words as distinct component parts, which 
we learn by learning to read, — what an immense elifect it must 
have on our reasoning faculties ! Logical in opposition to real."-- 



" Robertson, New Essays toward a Critical Method, p. 174. 

'"Robertson, New Essays toward a Critical Method, p. 179. 

"Robertson, New Essays toward a Critical Method, p. 180. Cf. also 
Omond, The Romantic Triumph, p. 167; Mackail, Coleridge's Literary 
Criticism, p. XII; and a Damaged Eastern Sage, Spectator, Oct. 26, 1895. 

^"A. P., p. II. Cf. Pater, Appreciations, p. 70: "His very language 
is forced and broken lest some saving formula should be lost — distincti- 



1 6 The Reconcilmtion of Opposites 

And in his concern for religion he fears "lest men by taking the 
zvords for granted never attain the feeling of the true faith. They 
only forbear, that is, even to suspect ""that the idea is erroneous, 
but do not believe the idea itself."-^' He is thoroughly conscious 
of the logical nature of the Logos, and yet he is jealous for the 
vitality that he knovifs rightfully belongs to it. "The more con- 
sciousness in our thoughts and words, and the less in our impulses 
and general actions, the better and more healthful the state both of 
head and heart,"-* he tells us. And again, "Quaere, whether or 
no too great definiteness of terms in any language may not con- 
sume too much of the vital and idea-creating force in distinct, 
clear, full-made images, and so prevent originality. For original 
might be distinguished from positive thoughts."-^ Words, the im- 
plication is, should not be dead, ready-made symbols for ready- 
made thoughts, but should be plastic enough to be used creatively 
both by the writer and the reader. They must live. 

His attempts to reinstate the Logos, to make of it a living 
power, are of many kinds, and are by no means consistent. Some- 
times he treats the words, the symbols, as having a life of their 
own, quite distinct from, though in some way parallel to, the 
reality which they represent. The suggestion comes to him after 
listening to the opera, in which he seems to have been carried 
away by the opposition, intricate yet ever resolving into harmon}-, 
of the many voices, and he writes : "Words are not interpreters, 
but fellow-combatants."-" The value of words consists to a large 
extent in the harmony of sounds that must parallel the harmony 
of meanings: "It is worthy notice (shown in the phrase T envy 
him such and such a thing,' meaning only, T regret I cannot share 
with him, have the same as he, without depriving him of it, or 
any part of it'), the instinctive passion in the mind for a one word 
to express one act of feeling. . . . On this instinct rest all 
the improvements ... of style."-' Even in the case of puns, 
ordinarily considered the most superficial kind of verbalism, he 



tics, ouiclcation, pentad of operative CIvistianity; he has a whole armory 
of these terms, and expects to turn the tide of human thought by fixing 
the sense of such expressions as "reason'; 'understanding'; 'idea'." 

=" A. P., p. 86. 

"Works, Vol. I, p. i66. 

-'■ A. P., p. 19. 
- ^ A. P., p. 96. 

=' A. P., p. 155- 



Coleridge's Philosophical Thought 17 

finds real significance, or tries to find it, in the harmony which 
similarity in sound establishes between diiTerent meanings, acci- 
dental and imstable as this harmony may be.-' 

It is a curious combination, the fondness for paradoxes and 
double meanings, in a man to whom philosophy was so sacred. In 
explaining Coleridge's antipathy to Pope, Brandes says, "Das 
germanische Naturell in ihm war ein geborener Feind von Esprit, 
Epigrammen und Pointen ;"-" and we have to admit this even 
while we find him reveling in paradoxes that are marked by a 
strongly epigrammatic element. The combination can be explained 
only by recognizing that verbalism in Coleridge's estimation par- 
took of the nature of the deepest realism. The justification or 
condemnation of such verbalism must rest ultimately with the 
logicians. But it is possible in this study at least to investigate 
the kind of aesthetic and literary criticism in which it issued. 

To sum up briefly : A theoretical insistence upon inclusiveness, 
in all spheres, and a temperament that found in abstract metaphys- 
ical entities, in mere words, real emotional values of almost en- 
ervating ultimateness, made it natural that Coleridge should pin 
his faith to the principle of the Reconcilation of Opposites. And 
it is natural that he should employ the logical form of this prin- 
ciple, in which the opposites to be reconciled are words and 
philosophical concepts rather than the forces and elements of a 
mechanically construed universe. The principle in this form serves 
primarily to define that which is positively inclusive, and abso- 
lute ; at the same time it gives room for all the negations, oppo- 
sitions and double meanings that must arise in any fundamental 
dealing with words and metaphysical concepts. 



^"[I] have learnt," he writes, "sometimes not at alt, and seldom harsh- 
\y to chide those conceits of words which are analogous to sudden fleeting 
affinities of mind. Even, as in a dance, you touch and join and ofif again, 
and rejoin your partner that leads down with you the dance, in spite of 
these occasional off-starts — for they. too. not merely conform to, but are 
of and in and help to form the delicious harmony." He would consider 
himself thrice blessed if he could find some eternally valid relation be- 
tween the harmony of sound and the apparently arbitrary harmony of 
meanings. In his "intended essay in defence of punning," he means "to 
defend those turns of words ... in certain styles of writing, by proving that 
language itself is formed upon associations of this kind . . . that words are 
not merely symbols of things and thoughts, but themselves things, and 
that any harmony in the things symbolized will perforce be presented to 
us more easily as well as with additional beauty, by a correspondent har- 
mony of the symbols with each other." (A. P., pp. 108 and 225.) 

™ Hauptstromungen, Vol. IV, p. 37. 



CHAPTER II 

General Characteristics of Coleridge's Application oe the 

Principle 

From one point of view Coleridge's use of the principle of 
the Reconciliation of Opposites might be taken as an attempt to 
resolve certain general aesthetic and philosophical dualisms based 
upon distinctions and oppositions that he recognized as unsound. 
Imbued to some extent with the newer and larger interpretations 
of metaphysical concepts inherent in the Kantian philosophy, he 
occasionally tries to do away with the dualism by translating one 
of the opposites into terms of the other. Thus he notes in one 
instance that the objectivity of an experience "consists in the uni- 
versality of its subjectiveness."^ Again, in a confused passage, 
he seems to be trying to express the fact that the individual con- 
sciousness is dependent for its very existence upon its relation to 
other conscious beings. "From what reason do I believe in con- 
tinuous and ever-continuable consciousness ? From conscience ! 
Not for myself, but for my conscience, that is, my affections and 
duties towards others, I should have no self — for self is defini- 
tion, but all boundary implies neighbourhood and is knowable only 
by neighbourhood or relations."- And in a semi-mystical vision he 
sees matter reduced to terms of mind in a manner strangely sug- 
gestive of Bergson's matter-memory hypothesis: "I saw in early 
youth, as in a dream, the birth of the planets ; . . . All the 
deviations . . . were seen as one intuition of one, the self- 
same necessity, and this necessity was a law of spirit, and all was 
spirit. And in matter all beheld the past activity of others or 
their own — and this reflection, this echo is matter — its only es- 
sence if essence it be."^ Sometimes, in his special concern for the 
mind-matter dualism, he tries to work out what is almost a system 
of psychophysical parallelism, a system which, while it does not 
abolish the dualism, at least neutralizes all opposition.* 

Moreover, on the purely critical side, we might find in Col- 
eridge's use of the principle simply an attempt to end, once and 



' A. P., p. 296. 

'A. P., p. 201. 

'A. P., p. 77. 

'A. P., pp. 101-102 and 112 ff. 



Coleridge's Application of tlie Principle 19 

for all, the conflict between the opposed concepts, reason and im- 
agination, emphasized respectively by the classicists and the ro- 
manticists — if we may use the terms thus loosely, again an at- 
tempt to do away with a distinction he recognized as false. Real 
as the opposition may have been between the literary tendencies 
sponsored by the two schools, the concepts upon which they took 
their respective stands had, through their very opposition, devel- 
oped until they became mutually inclusive instead of exclusive. 
This is generally recognized. With a criticism of literature in- 
creasingly wide in its scope and sensitive in its appreciation, the 
conception of reason, at one time associated with a narrow, ar- 
bitrary interpretation of the classical rules, developed, until, in- 
stead of negating, it came to include the freer genius of men like 
Spenser and Shakespeare, the sort of genius, or fancy as it was 
called, which would not fit the old formulas ; on the other side, 
fancy developed into imagination, which did not negate, but in- 
cluded reason ; as a consequence the conception of art came to in- 
clude what had been incompatible opposites, — hence the definition 
of art as the union of reason and imagination, as the reconciliation 
of opposites. 

Without a doubt Coleridge had a near interest in bringing to 
an end, or to what seemed to him an end, the conflict between the 
reason and the imagination. With his fine appreciation of Shake- 
speare, and much in a literature that did not confonn to the classic 
"rules," he could not rest satisfied with any narrowly rationalistic 
aesthetic theoi-y ; nor, with his essentially philosophic tempera- 
ment, could he permanently rest without any theory ; he had to 
find some law in the seemingly lawless.^ And his theory of the 
imagination, the question of plagiarism aside, has proved itself a 
positive constructive step in ending that form of the conflict then 
current. But I think no one can read Coleridge's works, espe- 
cially his informal note-book jottings, without feeling that his 
interest in the principle was something more than an interest in 
reconciling a critical dualism based upon intellectuaj distinctions 
and oppositions that he recognized as artificial and unsound, the 
dualism of a conflict which belonged rightfully to the past. He 
seems to take positive delight in finding oppositions to reconcile. 
He never tires of calling attention to the fact that extremes meet, 
but he is very evidently looking to find in nature as many pairs 
of extremes as possible. Like many workers of good works he 



'Cf. Wylie, Evolution of English Criticism, pp. 196-197. 



20 The ReconcUiation of Opposites 

would be sadly disappointed if he could not find any evils to rem- 
edy. It is this positing of opposites fully as much as their recon- 
ciliation that is significant. We must not regard the principle as a 
means of recovery from some heaven-sent malady. As such, it is, 
from our standpoint, but a poor sort of recovery, brought about 
by artificial stimulants ; for just as the dualism which Coleridge 
attempts to remedy is to us erroneously metaphysical and arbi- 
trary, so many of his attempts at synthesis are bound to seem 
formal. Much that he says on this subject is, we must admit, a 
kind of talk that seems to bear verbal witness to some mode of 
reconciliation, but does not actually help the process along very 
much. And yet it is with this kind of talk, quite as much as with 
his more fully worked out theory of the imagination that we must 
concern ourselves if we are to understand the nature of the con- 
crete critical applications of the principle. 

It would, I think, be fair to call Coleridge's interest in the 
principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites a constitutional mal- 
ady. Throughout his writings, particularly those informal notes 
to which students turn for some of his keenest and most charac- 
teristic utterances, we find him luxuriating as it were, in the meet- 
ing of extremes. He owns up to it himself : "I should like to 
know whether or how far the delight I feel, and have always felt, 
in adages or aphorisms of universal or very extensive application 
is a general or common feeling with men, or a peculiarity of my 
own mind. I cannot describe how much pleasure I have derived 
from 'Extremes meet,' for instance, or 'Treat everything according 
to its nature,' and, the last, 'Be !' In the last I bring all inward 
rectitude to its test, in the former all outward morality to its rule, 
and in the first all problematic results to their solution, and re- 
duce apparent contraries to correspondent opposites. How many 
hostile tenets has it enabled me to contemplate as fragments of 
truth, false only by negation and mutual exclusion?"" He is not 
fastidious as to the objects of his reflections. His philosophical 
sense is satisfied by contemplating such pairs of meeting ex- 
tremes as dark and excess of light, self-absorption and worldly- 
mindedness, nothing and intensest absolute being;' it is equally 
well satisfied to note that the "tooth-ache, where the suffering is 
not extreme, often finds its speediest cure in the silent pillow ; and 
gradually destroys our attention to itself by preventing us from 



°A. P., pp. 300-301. 
'A. P., p. S3. 



Coleridge's Application of the Principle 21 

attending to anytliing else ;"^ and, again, that "the thing that 
causes /nstabihty in a particular state, of itself causes stability. 
For instance, wet soap slips ofi the ledge — detain it till it dries a 
little, and it sticks."" 

His whole mental make-up is so permeated by the conscious- 
ness of opposition that even his sense experiences come to him 
in terms of the great elemental sense contrasts, such as rest and 
motion. Evidence of this is to be found in numerous jottings 
collected in the Anima Poetae. "In the foam-islands in a fiercely 
boiling pool, at the bottom of a water-fall, there is sameness from 
infinite change."^" "The spring with the little tiny cone of loose 
sand ever rising and sinking at the bottom, but its surface with- 
out a wrinkle-"^^ "The steadfast rainbow in the fast moving, fast- 
hurrying hail mist ! What a congregation of images and feel- 
ings, of fantastic permanence amidst the rapid change of the tem- 
pest — quietness the daughter of storm.'- "The immoveableness 
of all things through which so many men were moving — a harsh 
contrast compared with the universal motion, the harmonious sys- 
tem of motions in the country, and everywhere in Nature. In 
the dim light London appeared to be a huge place of sepulchres 
through which hosts of spirits were gliding."" 

Under his gaze the world becomes the expression, half meta- 
physical, half concrete, of unity and variety.'* "Oh, said I, as 
I looked at the blue, yellow green and purple-green sea, with all 
its hollows and swells, and cut-glass surfaces — oh, what an ocean 
of lovely forms ! And I was vexed, teased that the sentence 
sounded like a play of words ! That it was not — The mind 
within me was struggling to express the marvellous distinctness 
and unconfounded personality of each of the million millions of 
forms, and yet the individual unity in which they subsisted.'"^ 
Again, "The ribbed flame — its snatches of impatience, that half 
seem and only seem that half, to baffle its upward rush, — the eter- 



' Works, Vol. IV, p. 434- 

°A. P., p. 19. 

"A. P., p. 52. 

" A. P.. p. 17. 

""A. P., p. 61. 

"A. P., pp. 8-9. 

" For a full and appreciative discussion of Coleridge's hnbit of com- 
bining perception and speculation, see Aynard, La Vie d'un Poete, Chap. 
VIII, especially pp. 235-55. 

'•■'A. P., p. 100. 



22 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

nal unity of individualities whose essence is in their distinguish- 
ableness, even as thought and fancies in the mind."^" 

Sometimes his observations are more philosophical, and some- 
times even psychological : "How strange and awful is the synthe- 
sis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an 
autumnal day !"^' "The dim intellect sees an absolute oneness, 
the perfectly clear intellect knozvingly perceives it. Distinction 
and plurality lie in the betwixt.'"' The union of the one and the 
many is, he explains, "the co-presence of feeling and life, limit- 
less by their very essence, with form by its very essence limited, 
determinable, definite."^" And again, — "O the complexities of the 
ravel produced by time struggling with eternity ! a and b are dif- 
ferent, and eternity or duration makes them one — ^this we call 
modification — the principle of all greatness in finite beings, the 
principle of all contradiction and absurdity."-" 

Not infrequently the paradox is verbal, depending for its sig- 
nificance Hud its resolution upon the double meaning of some 
term. It is not a casual play on words. There are involved the 
logical opposition and the logical dual meanings that characterize 
all antitheses. "Shadow — its being subsists in shaped and definite 



"A. P., pp. iio-ii. 

" Works, Vol. VI, p. 484. 

"A. P., p. 53. 

"A. P., p. 61. 

^A. P., p. 155. — Coleridge's psychological genius is rapidly coming 
to be recognized, and for this the publication of the Anima Poetae is in 
ro small measure responsible. A reviewer wrote of this book when it 
first appeared : "As one lays it down one is struck with the astonishing and 
unrelaxing faculty of self-introspection, analysis, and original thought 
that the book displays." (Westminster Rev. CXLV : 537.) And C. E. 
Vaughan in the Cambridge History (Vol. XI, p. 152), writes as follows: 
"In the... field of psychology, his results are both sounder in themselves 
[than in metaphysics] and more absolutely his own. His records of the 
working of the mind, especially under abnormal or morbid conditions, are 
extraordinarily minute and subtle. It would hardly be too much to say 
that he is the founder of what has since become a distinct, and most 
fruitful branch of philosophy: the study of experimental psychology. And 
this, which is fully known only to those who are familiar with Anima 
Pacta-, is, perhaps his most original contribution to philosophy." Elton 
writes (A Survey of English Literature, Vol. II, p. 106) that his "psycho- 
logical genius is the link between Coleridge's art and his thinking, and works 
most surely of all when his thinking is turned upon art itself, in the analy- 
sis of his intuitions of Shakespeare or Wordsworth." Again, he notes 
(pp. 120-1) that his "digressive spinning of thought out of thought is 



Coleridge's Application of the Principle 23 

nonentity."-^ "The excess of humanity and disinterestedness in 
polite society, the desire not to give pain, for example, not to talk 
of your own diseases and misfortunes, and to introduce nothing 
but what will give pleasure, destroy all humanity and disinterest- 
edness, by making it intolerable, through desuetude, to listen to 
the complaints of our equals, or of any, where the listening does 
not gratify or excite some vicious pride and sense of superior- 
ity."-- It is just this dual meaning, implicit in all antithesis, that 
lies at the basis of what is as poetic and penetrating a comment 
on death as one often comes upon : "Death, first of all, eats of 
the Tree of Life and becomes immortal. Describe the fi'ightful 
metamorphosis."-^ 

Coleridge had some recognition of the fact that the opposi- 
tions he dealt with were, at times, verbal, "logical," rather than 
real. "To be and to act," he notes, "two in Intellect (that mother 
of orderly multitude and half sister of Wisdom and Madness) 
but one in essence."-^ Even in the act of prefacing a metaphysical 
explanation, he exclaims : "I would make a pilgrimage to the 
deserts of Arabia to find the man who could make me under- 
stand how the one can be many. Eternal, universal mystery ! It 
seems as if it were impossible, and yet it is, and it is everywhere! 
It is indeed a contradiction in terms, and only in terms."-'' But 
although he realized at times that these oppositions were ab- 
stract rather than real, he was quite unwilling to give them up. 



most marked when Coleridge is moving amongst theological or metaphy- 
sical ideas ; whilst when he is actually describing mental processes, how- 
ever evanescent, his hold of lucidity and of language is much greater. 
This is because he is on the ground observation, and is watching Ham- 
let or himself, and is nearer to his work as a poet or artist. In prose, 
he can hardly utter a feeling without noticing its birth ; a procedure that 
in his case is not the bare desiccating analysis, which destroys the feeling 
itself in the act of reflection ; but the words are charged with the feeling 
they describe, which Coleridge holds in the mind as a man holds a flower 
or a butterfly, intact, enjoying as well as noting it. No one has ever pos- 
sessed this double machinery in such perfection as he: it i's the source of 
his greatness as a literary critic both of form and matter; for he can 
re-word the artistic process of creation, both in himself and others, — the 
very process which the creator himself is commonly the last to apprehend 
distinctly." 

=^ A. P., p. 177- 

'' A. P., pp. 52-3- 

='A. P., p. 163. 

"A. P., p. 97- 

"'A. P., p. 61. 



24 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

He thought that he had reached something ultimate in Schel- 
lirig's principle, developed, or rather embodied, in the Biograi)hia 
Literaria, the principle of two opposed forces, the one contract- 
ing, the other expanding, which through their opposition crede 
a world. Here the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposifes 
was for him of almost scientific validity, although it usually 
manifested itself in his writings in a more "logical" form than 
this semi-scientific construction of the universe in terms of me- 
chanical forces. 

On the whole, then, Coleridge was not so much interested in 
showing that distinctions and oppositions were unsound, as he 
was in showing that they were ever present and yet were being 
transcended. He ordinarily clung to the opposites — to the terms 
of the union — tenaciously. 

With his fondness for words denoting metaphysical con- 
cepts, he would have been very slow to let them yield in prestige 
to any system of scientific or psychological analysis. He had an 
alTection for these terms simply as heirlooms. Moreover, the 
new values that were coming to consciousness in philosophy and 
aesthetics were best expressed, in lieu of a new terminology, by 
these traditional opposed concepts, man and nature, and all the 
rest, conceived as reconciled. The oppositions and the recon- 
ciliations together suggested the newer, more inclusive, though 
undefined values. These pairs of opposites instead of being 
forms to be discarded, furnished the natural formulae for Col- 
eridge to use in defining any and every experience or phenom- 
enon. 

There is further significance in the persistence of the antithe- 
ses, however. In accordance with Coleridge's well recognized 
fondness for the ideal in all things, we find him using this prin- 
ciple of balance as a norm. Like all terms of antitheses these 
concepts had no ultimate value taken separately, outside the 
formulae that opposed and reconciled them: the subject and the 
object could not stand alone as could the terms instruction and de- 
light employed by the earlier critics. But it is essential to note 
that from the standpoint of mere existence the terms still claimed 
separate recognition. Not as an ultimate value, but as a patho- 
logical form of existence, Coleridge recognized subjectivity that 
lacked its normal supplementary objective expression, passion 
uncontrolled by law or form, and, on the other hand, the formal 
uninformed by the vital. Coleridge recognized such cases, and 
condemned them as abnormal : "Take away from sounds the 



Coleridge's Application of the Principle 25 

sense of outness, and what a horrible disease would every min- 
ute become ! A drive over a pavement would be exquisite tor- 
ture. What, then, is sympathy if the feelings be not disclosed? 
An inward reverberation of the stifled cry of distress.""" "One 
excellent use of communication of sorrow to a friend is this, 
that in relating what ails us, we ourselves first know exactl}'' 
what the real grief is, and see it for itself in its own form and 
limits. Unspoken grief is a m.isty medley of which the real af- 
fliction only plays the first fiddle, blows the horn to a scattered 
mob of obscure feelings."-' Coleridge finds this pathological one- 
sidedness in many phases of life: "I have never known a trader 
in philanthropy, who was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. 
Individuals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their family 
relations, — men not benevolent or beneficial to individuals, but al- 
most hostile to them, yet lavishing money, and labor, and time, 
on the race, the abstract notion. The cosmopolitanism which does 
not spring out of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of na- 
tionality or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten growth."-^ "The 
power, in a democracy, is in focal points, without a centre ; and, in 
proportion as such democratical power is strong, the strength of 
the central government ought to be intense — otherwise the nation 
will fall to pieces."-" In the last two notes the metaphysical col- 
oring of the balance which is violated is not strong, yet even 
such observations were doubtless the outgrowth of the philo- 
sophical contemplation of the principle. 

The corrective function of Coleridge's philosophy is clearly 
brought out in Cestre's interesting book. La Revolution Fran- 
gaise et les Poetes Anglais. To quote a single passage from sev- 
eral that are pertinent : "II voua sa vie a une double tache qu'il 
jugeait indispensable au bien-etre materiel et moral de son pays: 
rappeler a ceux qui profitent des avantages sociaux les obligations 
de la justice et de 1' humanite, la loi du changement ; rappeler a 
ceux qui soufl^rent des imperfections de la societe, la discipline 
morale et sociale, la loi de la permanence."'" Of all "philosophic 
formulae, that of the union of opposites is perhaps best adapted 
to such corrective purposes ; certainly it is better adapted thaii 



' A. P., p. 23. 

'A. P., p. 32. 

'Works, Vol. VI, p. 474- 

' Works, Vol. VI, p. 396. 

' P. 474. See also pp. 445 and 485. 



26 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

any monistic concept that ignores dualism or treats it as intellec- 
tually unsound, for it is essential that the formula reflect the 
truths of actual conditions as well as the ideal to be attained 
through their union. 

Thus the union of opposites played a double role. It was a 
universally valid form of analysis that could be applied to any 
experience ; but it was also conceived as a standard or norm — an 
ideal which was not always realized."^ It is the sanity of the mind 
which is "between superstition with fanaticism on the one hand, 
and enthusiasm with diseased slowness to action on the other."^- 
It is the true religion which is "a synthesis of facts and ideas. "^^ 
And "a due mean of motive and impulse is the practicable object 
of our moral philosophy. "^^ 



^' Of interest in connection with Coleridge's dual use of the princi- 
ple is the theory propounded by Shawcross that Coleridge was led through 
Kant to regard the imagination (which is for him the prime faculty of 
mediation or reconciliation) "in a two-fold aspect — as tlie common property 
of all minds, and also, in its highest potency, as the gift of a few." (Bio- 
graphia Literaria, ed. Shawcross, Vol. I, p. xliv.) 

"- Works, Vol. Ill, p. 165. 

'Works, Vol. VI, p. 378. 

"'Works, Vol. VI, p. 319. The italics are mine. 



CHAPTER III 

The Expression of the Principle in Coleridge's 
Aesthetic Theory^ 

Coleridge's application of the principle of the Reconciliation 
of Opposites to aesthetics is much what we should expect from 
the use he makes of it in his general observations and reflections. 
For art lends itself particularly well to the sort of analysis to 
which Coleridge was continually subjecting life itself. There is 
in his art criticism just the same sort of baffling versatility that 
characterized his more general use of the principle. He is con- 
stantly shifting his point of view, giving us now a metaphysical 
definition of art, now a statement of the faculties involved in 
aesthetic creation or appreciation. 



^ It is now generally recognized that Coleridge took much of the 
material for his lectures on art very directly from Schelling and August 
Schlegel. Parallel passages for a number of Coleridge's doctrines con- 
sidered in this section and the following may be found in the appendix 
to Vol. IV of Coleridge's Works (Sarah Coleridge's notes), and in a 
dissertation entitled The Indebtedness of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to 
August Wilhelm von Schlegel by Miss Helmholz (University of Wis- 
consin Bulletin, Philology and Literature Series, Vol. Ill, 1903-7). In con- 
cluding her dissertation Miss Helmholz writes: 

"Coleridge has leniently been called the transmitter of German doc- 
trines in criticism as well as in philosophy [referring to Miss Wylie's 
Evolution of English Criticism]. He has been judged, and rightly, per- 
haps, by the suggestive and fruitful influence of those doctrines upon 
English criticism, doctrines into which he, no doubt, transfused something 
of his own fine poetic insight. And suggestive and fruitful they have 
been ; though presented to the world in fragments and mere hints. Through 
them an important phase of the intellectual wealth of Germany was opened 
to Englishmen, and English critical activity enriched beyond all measure. 

"Yet the present investigation shows that Coleridge is indebted to 
Schlegel for most of his principles of criticism and for other material 
amounting to no inconsiderable number of pages, and though, to a cer- 
tain extent, he may have borrowed unconsciously, he is nevertheless cen- 
surable for indifference to the property of others." 

Recognizing the strong German influence, one must be wary about 
crediting Coleridge with originality in such aesthetic doctrines as those 
of the imagination, tragedy and comedy, unity, the relation of art and 
nature, etc. As far as I have been able to determine, however, the larger 
part of his detailed criticism of Shakespeare's plays is his own. 



28 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

Perhaps the most striking impression in a general view of his 
aesthetic theorizing is that made by his metaphysical definition of 
art. The essence of it is that art is a reconciliation of certain 
pairs of opposites. Not simply in his formal definitions and 
analyses, but in the theorizing so evident in his concrete criti- 
cism, there is the notion of art that is summed up in his most 
comprehensive definition of the imaginative or poetic faculty : 
"This power. . .reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of 
opposite or discordant qualities : of sameness, with difiference ; of 
the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the in- 
dividual with the representative; the sense of novelty and fresh- 
ness with old and familiar objects ; a more than usual state of 
emotion with more than usual order ; judgment ever awake and 
steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or 
vehement."- No one pair of these opposites can be taken as more 
fundamental than any other. Whatever pair we may select, we 
immediately find ourselves entangled in several others, that is. 
provided the general philosophical notion involved has laid hold 
on us, provided we have "got the habit." 

This method of defining art is, of course, nothing more, or 
rather nothing less, than the direct reflection of the German 
philosophy of the time. It is by no means my intention to dis- 
cuss the significance of this philosophy to either Germany or 
England. I wish simply, in the light of the logical significance 
of the principle, to call attention to certain characteristics of its 
use by Coleridge. 

We must note, in the first place, that such formulae as the 
union of the vital and the formal, the individual and the univer- 
sal, are not primarily calculated to suggest either a scientific, 
structural analysis of the work of art, or a psychological descrip- 
tion of the aesthetic experience. No single term of a logical anti- 
thesis gives either a structural or a psychological unit. Such 
units involve both terms, for the formulation of the antithesis 
indicates the consciousness that the union of the terms is essen- 
tial to any ultimate, self-sufficient unit. These formulae must be 
taken as metaphysical rather than scientific, as approaching pure 
or "absolute" definitions of art. 

And as such, the formulae are most suggestive. Art, at least 



HVorks, Vol. Ill, p. 374. The development and significance of Col- 
eridge's theory of the imagination are set forth in some detail in the in- 
troduction of Shawcross's edition of the Biographia Literaria. 



Coleridge's Aesthetic Theory 29 

equally with life, was making clear the necessity of larger inter- 
pretations of these antithetical terms. The paradoxical defini- 
tions served to suggest the larger, more ultimate values that were 
coming to consciousness. A few of the definitions and analyses 
that take this form may be quoted : 

1. "Art. . .is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, na- 
ture and man."^ It consists of a "translation of man into nature."* 
The language of the genius, of Shakespeare in King Lear, for 
instance, is a blending of the language of man with the language 
of nature. The elements of the language of man "are pure ar- 
bitrary modes of recalling the object, and for visual mere ob- 
jects the}' are not only sufficient, but have infinite advantages 
from their very nothingness per se. But the language of natuie 
is a subordinate Logos, that was in the beginning, and was with 
the thing it represented, and was the thing it represented."^ The 
imaginative symbol combines the two. 

2. In the work of art the vital and the formal must be thor- 
oughly reconciled. "No work of true genius dares want its ap- 
propriate form, neither indeed is there any danger of this. As it 
must not, so genius can not, be lawless ; for it is even this that 
constitutes it genius — the power of acting creatively under laws 
of its own origination.'"* The thorough-going union of the for- 
mal and the vital, with the larger interpretations of both that are 
involved, is poetically suggested in an entry in the Anima Poetae : 
"Does the sober judgment previously measure out the banks be- 
tween which the stream of enthusiasm shall rush with its tor- 
rent sound? Far rather does the stream itself plough up its 
own channel and find its banks in the adamant rocks of nature !"' 

3. In this connection we must note Coleridge's half meta- 
physical, half scientific or descriptive, definition of poetry, as the 
reconciliation of means and end, part and whole. "Poetry, or 
rather a poem, is a species of composition, opposed to science, as 
having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end 
by the use of language natural to us in a state of excitement. — but 
distinguished from other species of composition, not excluded 
from the former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the 
whole consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the com- 



' Works, Vol. IV, p. 328. 
* Works, Vol. IV, p. 329. 
" Works, Vol. IV, p. 45- 
» Works, Vol. IV, p. 54. 
'A. P., p. 139. 



30 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

poiient parts ; — and the perfection of which is, to communicate 
from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible with 
the largest sum of pleasure on the whole."" Hence, put in what 
might almost be considered terms of structure, we find that in 
verse "the words, the media, must be beautiful,"" that is, the 
means must partake of the nature of the end. Prose is defined 
as "words in their best order," poetry as "the best words in the 
best order."^" 

4. Art consists in the functioning of two opposed human 
faculties. For example, the origin of metre Coleridge traces "to 
the balance in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which 
strives to hold in check the workings of passion. It might be eas- 
ily explained likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism 
is assisted by the very state, which it counteracts ; and how this 
balance of antagonists became organized into metre. . .by a super- 
vening act of the will and judgment, consciously and for the fore- 
seen purpose of pleasure. "^^ 

Taken simply as metaphysical definitions the value of these 
formulae can scarcely be overestimated. But Coleridge was not 
satisfied to confine himself to the essentially abstract and static 
conception of art and the aesthetic faculties which such formulae 
involve, the conception which is, at least from one point of view, 
their primary justification. Mingled with his metaphysics are 
many notes on problems of concrete structure and of aesthetic 
processes. The principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites is 
applied to both sets of problems. 

On the structural side the principle appears clearly in such 
laws as those of contrast and dramatic conflict (illustrated in the 
next section of this paper.) When it is applied to descriptions 
of aesthetic processes with more elaboration than in the instance 
just cited there is sometimes an unfortunate mixture of the meta- 
physical and the scientifically reaP^ — and Coleridge was so im- 
bued with the dynamic conception of art that he could not re- 
frain from dealing with processes. Art is not simply a union of 
man and nature, it is the interfusion of man into nature. So far 
so good. In general definitions of this sort there is no reason 



'Works, Vol. IV, p. 20. Cf. Vol. Ill, p. 371. 
" Works, Vol. VI, p. 468. 
" Works, Vol. VI, p. 293. 
"Works, Vol. Ill, p. 415. 

"Cf. Aynard : "Coleridge n'a jamais su distinguer le point de vue 
scientifiqiie du point de vue metaphysique."— La Vie d'un Poete, p. 359. 



Coleridge's Aesthetic Theory 31 

for quarreling with Coleridge ; we can take such definitions meta- 
physically, abstractly, in spite of the suggestion of the actual 
process ; we need not raise the objection that man and nature are 
too inseparable to be distinct elements of a process. But when 
Coleridge deliberately sets out to describe psychological processes, 
and uses as actual elements in the process what are really meta- 
physical abstractions such as form and content, the results are 
confusing. In his Essay on Beauty he notes that "when a thing 
e.xcites us to receive it in such and such a mould, so that its exact 
correspondence to that mould is what occupies the mind, — this is 
taste or the sense of beauty."" Coleridge is here pretending to 
give psychology, not metaphysics, yet to say that the mind is occu- 
pied by the correspondence between form and content implies a 
dualism that is psychologically unsound. 

Such confusion is not to be wondered at, though Coleridge 
has been bitterly criticised for it.^* I call attention to it simply as 



" Works, Vol. IV, p. 372. 

" De Quincey writes as follows regarding a case in which Coleridge 
tried to treat the logical opposites likeness and difference psychologically: 
"Coleridge was copious, and not without great right, upon the subject of 
Art . . . And yet, of the topics on which he was wont eloquently to 
hold forth, there was none on which he was less satisfactory — none on 
which he was more acute, yet none on which he was more prone to excite 
contradiction and irritation, if that had been allowed. 

"Here, for example, is a passage from one of his lectures on art: 

" 'It is sufficient that philosophically we understand that in all imi- 
tations two elements must coexist, and not only coexist, but must be 
perceived as existing. Those two constituent elements are likeness and 
unlikeness, or sameness and difference, and in all genuine creations of art 
there must be a uinon of these disparates. The artist may take this point 
of view where he pleases, provided that the desired effect be perceptibly 
produced, that there be likeness in the difference, difference in the like- 
ness, and a reconcilement of both in one. If there be likeness to nature 
without any check of difference, the result is disgusting, and the more 
complete the delusion the more loathesome the effect. Why are such 
simulations of nature as wa.x-work figures of men and .women so dis- 
agreeable? Because, not finding the motion and the life all we expected, 
we are shocked as by a falsehood, every circumstance of detail, which be- 
fore induced you to be interested, making the distance from truth more 
palpable. You set out with a supposed reality, and are disappointed and 
disgusted with the deception ; whilst in respect to a work of genuine imi- 
tation you begin with an acknowledged total difference, and then every 
touch of nature gives you the pleasure of an approximation to truth.' 

"In this exposition there must be some oversight on the part of Col- 
eridge. He tells us in the beginning that, if there be 'likeness to nature 
without any check of difference, the result is disgusting.' But the case of 



32 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

a means of indicating the legitimate and the illegitimate use of 
metaphysical antitheses. When these abstract terms were used 
as actual elements of a supposedly scientifically real process, the 
result was unfortunate. 

These metaphysical formulae suggest a method of definition 
or analysis applicable to any form of art, just as in Coleridge's 
general use of the principle we found them to serve as philo- 
sophic formulations of any mode of experience. But in the realm 
of aesthetics, again, we find the principle serving also as a norm, 
as an ideal not always realized. The fundamental opposites taken 
singly represented artistic or literary tendencies and critical tenets 
that Coleridge recognized as one-sided, as needing to be supple- 
mented by their logical opposites. Sensuousness in poetry, he 
notes, "insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness 
and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the images 
themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere 
didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful day- 
dreaming ;"'■'' he was clearly conscious of a pathologically subjec- 
tive kind of poetry. As Miss Wylie notes, "There was. . .a limit 
in his wide literary charity ; his universal appreciation found its 
exception in his antipathy to both the formalism and the emo- 
tionalism of the eighteenth century. The painstaking care of the 
Classicist was to him a vain and external formality ; the senti- 
mentality of a Sterne or a Richardson shocked the moralist who 
would widen, not narrow, the realm of law ; the earlier criticism 
otifered little to the philosopher who sought to establish the laws 
of artistic creation and enjoyment."^" Art in general has, through 
its balance of opposites, an idealizing influence upon life. "Idly 
talk they who speak of poets as mere indulgers of fancy, imagina- 
tion, superstition, etc. They are the bridlers by delight, the puri- 



the wax-work, which is meant to illustrate this proposition, does not at 
all conform to the conditions; the result is disgusting certainly, but not 
from any want of difiference to control the sameness, for, on the contrary, 
the difiference is confessedly too revolting; and apparently the distinc- 
tion between the two cases described is simply this — that in the illegiti- 
mate case of the wax-work the likeness comes first and the unlikeness 
last, whereas in the other case this order is reversed." (Posthumous 
Works, Vol. II, pp. 20-24.) 

Whether De Quincey is fair to Coleridge or not, he has hit upon a 
very real difficulty in showing that Coleridge makes likeness and dififer- 
ence distinct elements of a time process. 

'■'■Works, Vol. IV, p. 21. 

"Evolution of English Criticism, p. 167. 



Coleridge's Aesthetic Theory 33 

fiers ; they that combine all these with reason and order — the true 
protoplasts — Gods of Love who tame the chaos. "^' But there are 
all kinds of art, and Coleridge distinguishes carefully between 
those artists — poets — who attained the ideal, and those who 
failed.i^ 

Students of Coleridge's aesthetic theory may be impatient 
over his metaphysical speculations, especially as they seem so of- 
ten to be plagarisms. They may feel that they are not giving us 
Coleridge, that they are simply abstract and uncritical borrowings. 
But in a very real sense they are Coleridge. The very fact of the 
promiscuous borrowing, and the abstract status in which his the- 
ories are often left, reflect his peculiarly receptive and metaphysi- 
cal temperament. And I think it is fair to say that were it not 
for the metaphysical opposites, we should lack many of his keen- 
est concrete criticisrns ; it was essential that this form of thought 
should be with Coleridge a constitutional habit. 

Moreover, whether his abstract theorizings give us Coleridge 



" A. P., p. 96. 

" .Although Coleridge usually maintains that ancient and modern art 
represent two distinct types, each to be judged according to its own laws, 
and hence declines to rank one above the other, yet there are instances in 
which he selects the modern form as illustrative of a unity in variety ap- 
parently not attained by the ancients. The traditional unities, he ex- 
plains, "were to a great extent the natural form of that which in its ele- 
ments was homogeneous, and the representation of which was addressed 
pre-eminently to the outward senses." (Works, Vol. IV, p. 35.) Hence it 
appealed to a "sort of more elevated understanding." The modern ro- 
mantic drama on the other hand, appealed to the imagination and the 
reason, and both of these, as Coleridge frequently tells us, are the facul- 
ties which fuse, in reconciling, the heterogeneous and opposed. (Works, 
Vol. IV, pp. 35-36.) 

Again, of the Athenian and Shakespearian drama he writes: "The 
very essence of the former consists in the sternest separation of the diverse 
in kind and the disparate in degree, whilst the latter delights in interlacing, 
by a rainbow-like transfusion of hues, the one with the other." (Works, 
Vol. IV, p. 36.) 

And, comparing the roinance language with the Latin, — "We find it 
less perfect in simplicity and relation— the privileges of a language formed 
by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts ;— but yet more rich, more 
expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure affinities out of a 
chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more than a metaphor,— 
as an analogy of this, I have named the true genuine modern poetry the 
romantic ; and the works of Shakspeare are romantic poetry revealing it- 
self in the drama." (Works. Vol. IV, p. 35.) 

In the face of the new unity in variety the classical unity has come 
to seem to Coleridge— at times certainly— mere homogeneity. 



34 The Reconcili-ation of Opposites 

or not, we must admit their significance as definitions of art. The 
concept of evokitionary development that Coleridge frequently 
employs, may be better adapted to the description of artistic 
processes — though even this has serious limitations — than the con- 
cept of the reconciliation of metaphysical opposites. But the 
latter, while not of scientific value, served to make prevalent cer- 
tain larger interpretations of the elements of art and life that, in 
their turn, are serving as the basis of a sounder scientific proce- 
dure.^' 

Finally, the concept served, as will be more apparent in the 
discussion of Coleridge's concrete analyses, as a generally appli- 
cable standard of criticism. 



'" Cf. Miss Wylie's conclusion to her more general study of Col- 
eridge's criticism ; "It was inevitable that the criticism arising in such 
an age, and largely representing its reactionary tendencies, should be a 
promise and a suggestion ; that its suggestion returned to vitalize a stur- 
dier criticism and a more experimental philosophy, is its great glory . . . 
In his [Coleridge's] suggestions lies the germ of a higher develop- 
ment, the spirit that must inform the great and enduring work of the 
future. Fragmentary as his writings are, there is yet opened through 
them an ideal criticism that has never been reached, and for which we 
can only hope if the clear intellectuality of the eighteenth century shall 
come to blend with the spirituality that complemented and destroyed it." 
(Evolution of English Criticism, pp. 203-204.) 



CHAPTER IV 

Coleridge's Application of the Principle to Certain 
Literary Problems 

To many, Coleridge's pieces of concrete criticism seem much 
more significant than his abstract speculations. J. W. MackaiV 
for example, while thoroughly appreciative of Coleridge's ability 
to show us, through his concrete Shakespeare criticism, things 
"that we had not seen before, but see with a thrill of recognition 
when he points them out to us,"- yet objects to his metaphysical 
criticism rather seriously. He notes that poetry and philosophy 
are not the same things, and writes: "When Coleridge, as he so 
often does, . . . tries to express the function of poetry in the 
terms of his own metaphysical system, he not only ceases to 
be a poet but ceases to be a critic." He finds that while the errors 
and exaggerations of Coleridge's Shakespeare criticism may be 
explained on the grounds that he had an "inveterate tradition" to 
break down, yet the new tradition that he helped create was 
"largely false," and his criticism, tremendously illuminating for 
his own generation, is illuminating for us "less as a systematic ex- 
position and theory of Shakespeare than as a body of observa- 
tions and records."^ 



^ Coleridge's Literary Criticism, Introduction. 

"P. xvii. 

' Pp. xiii-xv. It is natural that the defects of Coleridge's philos- 
ophy should be more evident to critics of to-day than to the progressive 
minds of his own period and that immediately following. The most 
whole-hearted eulogy of his Shakespeare criticism that I have come upon 
is that of Charles Knight, in his Studies of Shakespeare published in 
1S49,— studies taken largely from the Pictorial and Library editions of 
Shakespeare published 1838-1844. Knight writes: 

"At the beginning of the nineteenth century a new school of criticism 
began to establish itself amongst us. CHARLES L.'^^MB and WILLIAM 
HAZLITT led the way in approaching Shakespeare, if not wholly in the 
spirit of Aesthetics, yet with love, with deep knowledge, with surpassing 
acuteness, with unschackled minds. But a greater arose. A new era of criti- 
cal opinion upon Shapespeare, as propounded by Englishmen, may be dated 
from the delivery of the lectures of SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 
at the Surrey Institute, in 1814. What that great man did for Shakespeare 
during the remainder of his valuable life can scarcely be appreciated by 
the public. For his opinions were not given to the world in formal treat- 



36 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

Yet it must be recognized, and to some extent it is recog- 
nized, that Coleridge's power of concrete analysis and his power 
of constructive metaphysical philosophizing were interrelated. 
Lowell put the matter well when he said, "His analysis was elu- 
cidative mainly, if you will, but could not have been so except in 
virtue of the processes of constructive and philosophical criti- 
cism that had gone on so long in his mind as to make its subtle 
apprehension seem an instinct. As he was the first to observe 
some of the sky's appearances and some of the shyer revela- 
tions of outward nature, so he was also first in noting some of 
the more occult phenomena of thought and emotion. It is a criti- 
cism of parts and passages, and was scattered carelessly in obiter 
dicta, but it was not a bringing of the brick as a specimen of the 
whole house. It was comparative anatomy, far rather, which 
from a single bone reconstructs the entire living organism."'' 

In the following sections of this study I am trying to dis- 
cover how closely Coleridge's power of critical insight, as re- 
vealed in his literary criticism, is correlated with the principle 
that is probably the basic principle of his metaphysics — that of 
the Union of Opposites. I have classified the material roughly 
according to the several problems of Dramatic Character, Tragi- 
comedy, Imitation, and Unity. 

The larger part of the material is taken from Coleridge's 
Shakespeare criticism. In his chapter on Coleridge, Symons 
writes: "Most of his best criticism circles around Shakespeare; 
and he took Shakespeare almost as frankly in the place of 
Nature, or of poetry. He affirms, 'Shakespeare knew the human 
mind, and its most minute and intimate v\'orkings, and he never 



ises and ponderous volumes. They were fragmentary, they were scat- 
tered, as it were, at random ; many of them were the oral lessons of that 
wisdom and knowledge which he poured out to a few admiring disci- 
ples. But they have had their eflFect. For ourselves, personally, we owe 
a debt of gratitude to that illustrious man that can never be repaid. If 
in any degree we have been enabled to present Shakespeare to the popular 
mind under new aspects, looking at him from a central point, which 
should permit us, however imperfectly, to comprehend something of his 
wondrous system, we owe the desire so to understand him ourselves to 
the germs of thought which are scattered through the works of that phil- 
osopher ; to whom the homage of future times will abundantly com- 
pensate for the partial neglect of his contemporaries. We desire to con- 
clude this criticism of the opinions of others upon the works of Shake- 
speare, in connection with the imperfect expression of our own sense of 
those opinions, with the name of COLERIDGE." (P. 560.) 
* Prose Works, Vol. VI, p. 73- 



Application to Literary Problems 37 

introduced a word, or a thought, in vain or out of place.' This 
granted (and to Coleridge it is essential that it should be granted, 
for in less than the intinite he cannot find space in which to use 
his wings freely) he has only to choose and define, to discover 
and illuminate. In the 'myriad-minded man,' in his 'oceanic 
mind,' he finds all the material that he needs for the making of a 
complete aesthetic."" This tells the whole story. In Shakespeare, 
art and nature were one, and, in his art, the ideal and the actual. 
Hence Shakespeare furnishes the most admirable illustrations of 
the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites, which was a 
formula, now of life or art in general, and now of the ideal. It 
is largely in Coleridge's appreciative criticism of Shakespeare 
that we find his concrete literary applications of the principle. 

I. Analysis of the Dramatic Character 

In anlayzing the characters of the drama and of prose fiction 
Coleridge finds many instances of the union of opposites, espe- 
cially of the universal and the individual. There is a universal 
basis in all character, he maintains, and this is, in the individual, 
modified by circumstances. He almost puts the matter in terms 
of heredity and environment in his discussion of Shakespeare's 
women characters: "In all Shaksperian women there is essen- 
tially the same foundation and principle ; the distinct individ- 
uality and variety are merely the result of the modification of 
circumstances, whether in Miranda the maiden, in Imogen the 
wife, or in Katherine the queen."'' And in another passage, the 
universal appears as the past experience stored up, as it were, 
in every individual :' "In Shakspeare all the elements of wom- 
anhood are holy, and there is the sweet, yet dignified feeling of 
all that continuatcs society, as sense of ancestry and of sex, with 
a purity unassailable by sophistry because it rests not in the anal- 
ytic processes, but in that sane equipoise of the faculties, during 

which THE FEELINGS ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL PAST EXPERI- 
ENCE, — NOT OF THE INDIVIDUAL ONLY, but of all those by whom 
she has been educated, and their predecessors even up to the first 
mother that lived. "^ 



"The Romantic Movement, p. 135. 

'Works, Vol. IV, p. 76. 

' In the quotations in this section I have taken the liberty of putting 
certain phrases in small capitals to make the concept of opposition more 
easily traceable. The italics are Coleridge's own. 

' Works, Vol. IV, pp. -s-76. 



38 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

Even the superstitious element in human nature may repre- 
sent the universal element — the general race experience appear- 
ing in the individual in the form of presentiments. In his notes 
on Richard II, Act II, Scene i, Coleridge comments on John of 
Gaunt's forewarnings to the king as follows : "And mark in this 
scene Shakspeare's gentleness in touching the tender supersti- 
tions, the terrac incognitae of presentiments, in the human mind ; 
and how sharp a line of distinction he commonly draws between 
these obscure forecastings of general experience in each in- 
dividual, and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it may 
be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakspeare, in the abso- 
lute universality of his genius, always reverences vi^hatevER 
ARISES OUT OF OUR MORAL NATURE ; he never profanes his muse 
with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and general, 
however unaccountable, feelings of mankind. "° 

Not only does Coleridge conceive the universal to be one of a 
pair of opposites constituting the character, but the universal ele- 
ment itself consists in the just balance of certain other opposites. 
In all men, Coleridge maintains, there is a balance of certain fun- 
damental, opposed tendencies. Even such a character as that of 
Don Quixote, where individuality is carried to the extreme, illus- 
trates not merely the necessity in a normal being, but the uni- 
versal, scientific fact of balance. The subjective always requires 
its objective counterpart: 

"He has no knowledge of the sciences or scientific arts which 
give to the meanest portions of matter an intellectual interest, and 

wrhich ENABLE THE mind TO DECIPHER IN THE WORLD OF THE 

SENSES THE INVISIBLE AGENCY THAT ALONE, OF WHICH THE 

world's phenomena are THE EFFECTS AND MANIFESTATIONS, — 
AND THUS, AS IN A MIRROR TO CONTEMPLATE ITS OWN REFLEX, ITS 
LIFE IN THE POWERS, ITS IMAGINATION IN THE SYMBOLIC FORMS, 
ITS MORAL INSTINCTS IN THE FINAL CAUSES, AND ITS REASON IN 

THE LAWS OF MATERIAL NATURE : but — estranged from all the 
motives to observation from self-interest — the persons that sur- 
round him too few and too familiar to enter into any connection 
with his thoughts, or to require any adaptation of his conduct to 
their particular characters or relations to himself — his judgment 
lies fallow, with nothing to excite, nothing to employ it. Yet, — 
and here is the point, where genius even of the most perfect kind, 
allotted but to few in the course of many ages, does not pre- 



' Works, Vol. IV, p. 126. 



Application to Literary Problems 



39 



elude the necessity in part, and in part counterbalance the crav- 
ing by sanity of judgment, without which genius either cannot be, 
or cannot at least manifest itself, — the dependency oe our na- 
ture ASKS FOR SOME CONFIRMATION FROM WITHOUT, THOUGH IT 
BE ONLY FROM THE SHADOWS OF OTHER MEN's FICTIONS. 

"Too uninformed, and with too narrow a sphere of power 
and opportunity to rise into the scientific artist, or to be himself 
a patron of art, and with too deep a principle, and too much 
innocence to become a mere projector, Don Quixote has recourse 
to romances."^" 

In commenting upon Don Quixote's appeal to Sancho, 
"But tell me, on your life, have you ever seen a more val- 
orous knight than I, upon the whole face of the known earth? 
Have you read in story of any other, who has, or ever had, more 
bravery in assailing, more breath in holding out, more dexterity 
in wounding, or more address in giving a fall ?" Coleridge notes : 
"Remark the necessity under which we are of being sym- 
pathized WITH, FLY' AS HIGH INTO ABSTRACTION AS WE MAY, 
AND HOW CONSTANTLY THE IMAGINATION IS RECALLED TO THE 
GROUND OF OUR COMMON HUMANITY!"" 

Sometimes it seems that the mere existence of this balance of 
opposites, either in the character or in the experiences which he 
undergoes, is what constitutes the artistic or dramatic element, 
universal as the balance is. Troilus, the inference is, represents 
the ideal hero, his love showing the union of opposites ; it is 
"afifection, passionate indeed, — swoln with the confluence oF 
YOUTHFUL instincts AND YOUTHFUL FANCY, and growing in the 
radiance of hope newly risen, in short enlarged by the collective 
sympathies of nature, — but still having a depth of calmer element 
in A WILL STRONGER THAN DESIRE, more entire than choice, and 
WHICH GIVES PERMANENCE TO ITS OWN ACT by converting it into 
faith and duty."^- One of the special characteristics of Shake- 
speare's plays he finds to be "signal adherence to the great law of 
nature, that all opposites tend to attract and tamper each 
OTHER. Passion in Shakspeare generally displays liber- 
tinism, BUT INVOLVES morality; and if there are exceptions to 
this, they are, independently of their intrinsic value, all of them 



"Works, Vol. IV, pp. 266-267. 
"Works. Vol. IV, OD. 271-372. 
" Works, Vol. IV, p. 98. 



40 The Keconciliation of Opposites 

indicative of individual character, and, like the farewell admoni- 
tions of the parent, have an end beyond the parental relation."'^ 
The union of the universal and the individual, or the objec- 
tive and the subjective, serves to explain the effect produced by 
the ghost in Hamlet. In the first scene Horatio explains the 
ghost historically, as it were, and Coleridge notes : "And observe, 
upon the Ghost's reappearance, how much Horatio's courage is 
increased by having translated the late individual spectator in- 
to GENERAL THOUGHT AND PAST EXPERIENCE."" When the ghost 
appears in Scene 4, "The co-presence of lioratio, Marcellus and 
Bernardo is most judiciously contrived ; for it renders the cour- 
age of Hamlet and his impetuous eloquence perfectly intelligi- 
ble. The knowledge, — the unthought oe consciousness, — 

THE sensation, OF HUMAN AUDITORS OE FLESH AND BLOOD 

SympaThists — acts as a support and a stimulation a tergo, while 
the front of the mind, The whole consciousness of the speak- 
er, IS filled, yea, ABSORBED, BY THE APPARITION. Add, tOO, that 

the apparition itself has by its previous appearances been brought 
nearer to a thing of this world. This accrESCEncE OF objectiv- 
ity in a ghost that yet retains all its ghostly attributes and fear- 
ful SUBJECTIVITY, is truly wonderful."" 

Thus Coleridge sometimes finds the perfect dramatic character 
or the highly dramatic experience to consist in the balance of ex- 
treme degrees of the great fundamental opposites. Frequently, 
however, the dramatic character is one in which one tendency is 
developed to the partial exclusion of the other. It is the domin- 
ance of the one trait that individualizes the character, and makes 
it emerge from the universal (where there is a just balance). As 
Coleridge says in comparing Shakespeare's characters with 
Chaucer's : "Shakspeare's characters are the representatives of 
the interior nature of humanity, in which some element has be- 
come SO predominant as to destroy the health of the 
mind."!" 

In such instances there is a double application of the principle 
of the Reconciliation of Opposites, the predominance of either 
one of some pair of opposites giving the individuality essential 



" Works, Vol. IV, p. 61. 
" Works, Vol. IV, p. ISO. 
" Works, Vol. IV, p. 155. 
"Works, Vol. IV, p. 246. 



Application to Literary Problems 41 

to a union of another pair of opposites, the universal and the in- 
dividual. 

There may be a happy contrast between characters in whom 
the reciprocal traits are respectively stressed ; in such a case by 
means of the contrast the balance is established, opposites are 
created, and, since they are part of one artistic unit, in a sense 
reconciled. Take, for example, Don Quixote and Sancho : "Don 
Quixote's leanness and featureliness are happy exponents of the 
excess of the fonnative or imaginative in him, contrasted with 
Sancho's plump rotundity, and recipiency of external impres- 
sion."^' Again, "Don Quixote grows at length to be a man out 
of his wits ; his understanding is deranged ; and hence without 
the least deviation from the truth of nature, without losing the 
least trait of personal individuality, he becomes a substantial liv- 
ing allegory, or personification of the reason and the moral 

SENSE, DIVESTED OF THE JUDGMENT AND THE UNDERSTANDING. 

Sancho is the converse. He is the common sense without rea- 
son OR imagination; and Cervantes not only shows the excel- 
lence and power of reason in Don Quixote, but in both him and 
Sancho the mischiefs resulting from a severance of the 

Two MAIN constituents OF SOUND INTELLECT AND M0R.\L 

action. Put him and his master together and they form 
a perfect intellect; but they are separated and without 
cement; and hence each having a need of the other for its own 
completeness, each has at times a mastery over the other. For 
the common sense, although it may see the practical inapplica- 
bility of the dictates of the imagination or abstract reason, yet 
can not help submitting to them. These two characters possess 
the world, alternately and interchangeably the cheater and the 
cheated. To impersonate them, and to combine the permanent 
with the individual, is one of the greatest creations of genius, 
and has been achieved by Cervantes and Shakspeare, almost 
alone."!' 

But such contrast is by no means essential. The character 
need not be pitted against its opposite. The real dramatic con- 
flict is not so much that between two opposites on the same level 
as it is that between the individual, representing the dominance 
of one tendency, and the universal, which, while it may be con- 
ceived as the reciprocal element, really involves the completed 



" Works, Vol. IV, p. 266. 

" Works, Vol. IV, pp. 267-268. 



42 Tlie Reconciliation of Oppositcs 

balance. In Hamlet Coleridge discovers no such contrast as in 
Don Quixote, but the character of Hamlet admirably illustrates 
the lack of balance that individualizes : "I believe the character of 
Hamlet may be traced to Shakspeare's deep and accurate science 
in mental philosophy. ... In order to understand him, it is essential 
that we should reflect on the constitution of our own minds. Man 
is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought 
prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, 

A BALANCE IS CONSTANTLY MAINTAINED BETWEEN THE IMPRES- 
SIONS FROM OUTWARD OBJECTS AND THE INWARD OPERATIONS OF 

THE INTELLECT : — for if there be an overbalance in the contem- 
plative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere medi- 
tation, and loses his natural power of action. Now one ot 
Shakspeare's modes of creating character is, to conceive 
any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, 
and then to place himself, Shakspeare, thus mutilated or dis- 
eased, under given circmstances. In Hamlet he seems to have 
wished to examplify the moral necessity of a due balance BE- 
TWEEN OUR attention to the objects of our SENSES, and our 
MEDITATION ON THE WORKINGS OF OUR MINDS, — an equilibrium 
between the real and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this 
balance is disturbed ; his thoughts and the images OF his 
fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and 
his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his 
contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and color not nat- 
urally their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, 
intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to 
REAL action, consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and ac- 
companying qualities. This character Shakspeare places in cir- 
cumstances, under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the 
moment : Hamlet is brave and careless of death ; but he vacillates 
from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the 
power of action in the energy of resolve."'" 

Even here, however, nature asserts herself, it seems, to main- 
tain some sort of balance, for Hamlet's mind is not simply con- 
stantly "throwing a mist over all common-place actualities," but 
also "giving substance to shadows." As in the case of Don 
Quixote, some substance there must be. Of Hamlet's first solilo- 
quy he notes, "This tacdium vitae is a common oppression on 
minds cast in the Hamlet mould, and is caused by disproportion- 



" Works, Vol. IV, p. 145- 



Application to Literary Problems 43 

ate mental exertion, which necessitates exhaustion of bodily feel- 
ing. When there is a just coincidence of external and internal 
action, pleasure is always the result ; but where the former is de- 
ficient, and the mind's appetency of the ideal is unchecked, real- 
ities will seem cold and unmoving. In such cases, passion com- 
bines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood of his mind 
the relation of the appearance of his father's spirit in arms is 
made all at once to Hamlet."-" 

The abnormal predominance of the imagination appears again 
in the character of Lady Macbeth, though here it plays a dif- 
ferent role. "Lady Macbeth, like all in Shakspeare, is a class 
individualized :— of high rank, left much alone, and feeding her- 
self with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the courage of 
fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the reali- 
ties of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by 
ambition ; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity 
of fancy which she can not support, but sinks in the season of 
remorse, and dies in suicidal agony. Her speech : — 

Come all you spirits 
That tend on mortal thoughts, imsex me here, &c., 

is that of one who had habitually familiarized her imagination 
to dreadful conceptions and was trying to do so still more. Her 
invocations and requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind 

ACCUSTOMED ONLY HITHERTO TO THE SHADOWS OF THE IMAGINA- 
TION, VIVID ENOUGH TO THROW THE EVERY-DAY SUBSTANCES OF 
LIFE INTO SHADOW, BUT NEVER AS YET BROUGHT INTO DIRECT CON- 
TACT WITH THEIR OWN CORRESPONDENT REALITIES.""^ 

lago's abnormality is his consciousness of superior intellect. 
He shows himself to be a passionless character, according to Col- 
eridge, in his reply to Roderigo's question, "What should I do ? I 
confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to 
amend it." lago replies: "Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves that 
we are thus, or thus." Coleridge's comment reads : "This speech 
comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will 
IN INTELLECT ; and therefore he is here a bold partisan of a 
truth, but vet of a truth converted into a falsehood by the 



-""Works, Vol. IV, p. 152. 
^ Works, Vol. IV, p. 170. 



44 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

ABSENCE OF ALL NECESSARY MODIFICATION CAUSED BY THE FRAIL 
NATURE OP MAN."-- 

In Richard II there are examples both of the really dramatic 
abnormality and of that which is merely "adventitious." The one 
sets off the other. 

"There is scarcely anything in Shakspeare in its degree, more 
admirably drawn than York's character ; his religious loyalty 
struggling with a deep grief and indignation at the king's follies; 
his adherence to his word and faith, once given in spite of all, 
even the most natural, feelings. You see in him the weakness OF 
OLD ACE, and the overwhelmingness of circumstances. For a Time 
SURMOUNTING HIS SENSE oF DUTY — the junction of both exhibited 

in HIS BOLDNESS IN WORDS and FEEBLENESS IN IMMEDIATE ACT ; 

and then again his effort to retrieve himself in abstract 
LOYALTY, even at the heavy price of the loss of his son. This 

species of ACCIDENTAL AND ADVENTITIOUS WEAKNESS IS BROUGHT 
INTO PARALLEL WITH RiCHARD's CONTINUALLY INCREASING 
ENERGY OF THOUGHT, AND AS CONSTANTLY DIMINISHING 

POWER OF ACTING ; — and thus it is Richard that breathes a har- 
mony and a relation into all the characters of the play."-^ 

Thus the dramatic character illustrates, to quote from Col- 
eridge's definition of beauty, "not only the living balance, but like- 
wise all the accompaniments that even by disturbing are neces- 
sary to the renewal and continuance of the balance."-'' This view 
of the dramatic character as individualized by the excess of one 
fundamental quality and a corresponding deficiency in its oppo- 
site, is quite in keeping with Coleridge's theory of the drama — 
tragedy especially. In tragedy there is a conflict between the in- 
dividual will and fate, and there are suggestions of a reconcilia- 
tion of the two : "In the drama, the will is exhibited as struggling 
with FATE," — and further — "the deepest effect is produced, when 
the fate is represented as a higher and intelligent will, and the 
opposition of the individual as springing from a defect."-" The 
conception of reconciliation is made explicit in Coleridge's lecture 
on the Greek drama : "Tragedy, indeed, carried the thoughts into 
the mythologic world, in order to raise the emotions, the fears, 
and the hopes, which convince the inmost heart that their final 



"= Works, Vol. IV, p. i8o. 
'■^ Works, Vol. IV, p. 125. 
=' Works, Vol. IV, p. 371. 
"Works, Vol. IV, p. 116. 



Application to Literary Problems 45 

cause is not to be discovered in the limits of mere mortal life, 
and force us into a presentiment, however dim, of a state in 
which these struggles of the inward free will with outward ne- 
cessity, which form the true subject of the tragedian, shall be 
reconciled and solved."'-" 

But Coleridge's use of opposition in the analysis of the dra- 
matic character is not confined to such elemental philosophic anti- 
theses as the Individual and the Universal, Reason and Emo- 
tion, the Ideal and the Real. In his analysis he speaks paradox- 
ically of various qualities pertaining to the human soul, simul- 
taneously affirming and denying their presence, or else affirming 
the coexistence of the quality and its opposite ; thus he suggests 
a larger interpretation of the quality involved. This larger inter- 
pretation is in either case just that larger meaning which any 
term must acquire when it is reconciled with its opposite, — the 
logic of antithesis holds whether the opposition is that between 
two antithetical qualities or that between the presence and ab- 
sence of a single quality. He seems perhaps to be punning, for 
he is using words in a double sense, but he is punning logically. 
He is suggesting a larger meaning of a term by showing up the 
contradiction that must be recognized if we take it in its narrow 
sense. Take, for example, the word "character." The smaller 
and the larger meanings are both obvious in the following notes. 
In his criticism of Hamlet, Coleridge writes : "Note Shakspeare's 
charm of composing the final character by the absence of char- 
acters, that is, marks and out-jottings."-^ Again, in his Table 
Talk : " 'Most women have no character at all,' said Pope, and 
meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man and woman 
much better, saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of women 
to be characterless."-* 

A most suggestive comment on the relativity of madness and 
sanity, suggesting larger meanings of both, is the note on Ham- 
let's madness. This, Coleridge finds, "is made to consist in the 
free utterance of all the thoughts that had passed through his 
mind before ; — in fact, in telling home-truths."-" 

Several notes on Macbeth give evidence of the same method 
of analysis. In discussing the element of superstition in the play, 
he indicates by means of a paradox, the two possibilities of the 



" Works, Vol. IV, p. 26. 
"Works, Vol. IV, p. 1^9- 
" Works, Vol. VI, p. 349- 
" Works, Vol. IV, p. 162. 



46 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

passion of hope, the one expansive, stimulating, thoroughly whole- 
some, the other sub-normal: "Superstition, of one sort or an- 
other, is natural to victorious generals ; the instances are too no- 
torious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in war- 
fare, and such vast events are connected with the acts of a single 
individual, — the representative, in truth, of the efforts of myriads, 
and yet to the public, and, doubtless, to his own feelings, the ag- 
gregate of all, — that the proper temperament for generating or re- 
ceiving superstitious impressions is naturally produced. Hope, 

THE MASTER EEEMENT OE A COMMANDING GENIUS, MEETING 
WITH AN ACTIVE AND COMBINING INTELLECT, AND AN IMAGINA- 
TION OF JUST THAT DEGREE OF VIVIDNESS WHICH DISQUIETS AND 
IMPELS THE .SOUL TO TRY TO REALIZE ITS IMAGES, GREATLY IN- 
CREASES THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE MIND; and hence the im- 
ages become a satisfying world of themselves, as is the case in 
every poet and original philosopher; — but hope Fully grati- 
fied, AND yet the elementary BASIS OF THE PASSION REMAIN- 
ING, BECOMES fear; and, indeed, the general, who must often 
feel, even though he may hide it from his own consciousness, 
how large a share chance had in his successes, may very natur- 
ally be irresolute in a new scene, where he knows that all will de- 
pend on his own act and election."'"' 

Macbeth is characterized as "all-powerful without strength ; 
he wishes the end, but is irresolute as to the means ; conscience 
distinctly warns him, and he lulls it imperfectly."^^ 

In the notes on Othello, there are some rather striking para- 
doxes. Of lago's jealous denunciation of Cassio he writes: "In 
what follows, let the reader feel how by and through the glass 
of two passions, disappointed vanity and envy, THE very vices 
of which he is complaining, are made to act upon him as if they 
were so many excellences, and the more appropriately, because 
cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious 
of inward weakness ; — but they act only by half, like music on 
an inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevent him 
from listening to it."^- And of Othello's speech in the last scene, 
beginning, 

"Speak of me as I am — 
. . .of one whose hand. 

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away 

Richer than all his tribe," 



'"Works, Vol. IV, pp. 165-166. 
^ Works, Vol. IV, p. 168. 
=' Works, Vol. IV, p. 178. 



Application to Literary Problems 47 

"Othello wishes to Excuse himself on the score of ignorance, 
and YET NOT TO excuse himself,— to EXCUSE himself by accus- 
ing. This struggle of feeling is freely conveyed, in the word 
'base,' which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own char- 
acter, but as the momentary representative of Othello's. "^^ 

"The motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity,"^'' exempli- 
fied in lago's lines, "I hate the Moor," etc., gives an interpreta- 
tion of the term motive that suggests some aspects of present- 
day criminology. As Coleridge elsewhere notes of Macbeth, the 
real germ lies back of the immediate or assumed cause.^^ The idea 
is elaborated a little more in a jotting in the Anima Poetae. Col- 
eridge notes that in trying to discover reasons for suicide we are 
trying to "fish out some motive for an act which proceeded from 
a motive-making impulse.""" 

Finally in the notes on King Lear, Coleridge remarks as one 
of the malign influences on Edmund, "the gnawing conviction that 
every show of respect is an effort of courtesy, which recalls, while 
it represses, a contrary feeling.""' 

The application of the principle in the analysis of dramatic 
character is without doubt highly complex and its sigificance lies 
very largely in the concrete instances of its application. But 
there are one or two fairly definite suggestions of theory worth 
noting. In the first place, Coleridge's analysis of the art product 
in terms of logical opposites, even though these opposites are 
generalizations or abstractions, seems, to some extent, to reflect 
directly the structural reality of the product. The drama does, 
it would seem, by representing extremes, interpret life as an act- 
ual conflict of just those elements that we find opposed in the 
abstrations of a logical antithesis. In the second place, the fre- 
quency with which Coleridge uses verbal paradoxes in his criti- 
cism, indicating dual meanings, at least suggests the peculiar way 
in which art brings to consciousness the sense of something more 
than is on the surface, and further indicates that somehow the 



^^ Works, Vol. IV, p. 184. 

" Works, Vol. IV, p. 181. 

" When Macbeth anticipates Banquo's statement of the prophecy, in- 
terrupting with, "And thane of Cawdor too: went it not so?" Coleridge 
notes : "So surely is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause, 
and immediate temptation !" Works, Vol. IV, p. 168. 

" A. P., p. 196. 

" Works, Vol. IV, p. 136. 



48 Tlie Reconciliation of Opposites 

interaction between the accepted surface reality and this deeper 
reahty, gives the dramatic element, that is, issues in the external 
conflict.^* 

2. Problem of Tragi-Comedy 

In his justification of Shakespeare's "romantic" art Coleridge 
naturally found it necessary to consider rather carefully the in- 
termixture of comedy and tragedy. Both from the philosophi- 
cal and from the psychological standpoint he finds that the two 
actually have something in common. The separative spirit of the 
Greek arts is exemplified, he notes, in the opposition of their 
comedy to their tragedy. "But," he continues, "as the immedi- 
ate struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so 
both were alike ideal ; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to 
as great a distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy 
of Sophocles above its tragic events and passions.""" The 
sources of the tragic and the comic are to a degree similar; hence 
we find in nature alternations of the two. Coleridge works the 
matter out in some detail in explaining the semi-falsity of Ham- 
let's madness : "The truth is, that after the mind has been 
stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must either sink into 
exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is thus 
well known, that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty contrive 
escape from conscience by connecting something of the ludicrous 
with them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain tech- 
nical phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. In- 
deed, paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the 
human mind always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both 
arise from the perception of something out of the common order 
of things — something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this 
we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, 
and the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of 
these opposites — they are not contraries — appears from the cir- 
cumstance, that laughter is equally the expression of extreme an- 
guish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and 
tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merri- 



^'That is, art expresses in a more evident way than ordinary life the 
logic of antithesis. I grant that in this theorizing I am reading some- 
thing between the lines of Coleridge's criticism, but it is sometliing that I 
cannot fail to find there when considering the aesthetic implications of 
antithesis as suggested by Professor Lloyd. 

'"Works, Vol. IV, p. 23. 



Application to Literary Problems 49 

ment. These complex causes will naturally have produced in 
Hamlet the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the 
overwhelming and supernatural by a wild transition to the ludi- 
crous — a sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of de- 
lirium. For you may, perhaps, observe that Hamlet's wildness is 
but half false ; he plays that subtle trick of pretending to act only 
when he is very near really being what he acts."*" 

The fusion of the two is frequently justified. It may be 
justified by the psychological effect produced on the audience by 
the contrast, or again by a real, dramatic interaction between the 
tragic and comic characters. The effect of contrast is noted in 
the following remark: "Shakspeare found the infant stage de- 
manding an intermixture of ludicrous character as imperiously as 
that of Greece did the chorus, and high language accordant. And 
there are many advantages in this ; — a greater assimilation to 
nature, a greater scope of power, more truths, and more feel- 
ings ; — the elTects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool ; and espe- 
cially this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently 
elevated by your having previously heard, in the same piece, the 
lighter conversation of men under no strong emotion."*^ 

In another passage King Lear is used to illustrate the actual 
effect produced upon the tragic character by the comic : "Shak- 
speare's comic are continually reacting upon his tragic charac- 
ters. Lear, wandering amidst the tempest, has all his feelings of 
distress increased by the overflowings of the wild wit of the Fool 
. . . Thus even his comic humor tends to the development of 
tragic passion. "*- 

There is a very keen comment on the relation of the two in 
the notes on Romeo and Juliet. "With his accustomed judg- 
ment, Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a lively pic- 
ture of all the impulses of the play ; and, as nature ever presents 
two sides, one for Heraclitus and one for Democritus, he has by 
way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by 
the contagion of it reaching the servants, who have so little to 
do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the super- 
fluity of sensorial power fly off through the escape-valve of wit- 
combats, and of quarreling with weapons of sharper edge, all in 
humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a sort of unhired 



"Works, Vol. IV, pp. 155-156. 

" Works, Vol. IV, p. 38. 

" Works, Vol. IV, pp. 64-65. 



50 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

fidelity, an ourisliiicss about all this that makes it rest pleasant 
on one's feelings. "^^ 

The fusion may be of one sort or another, but it must be a 
real fusion. "In Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies," Coleridge 
notes, "the comic scenes are rarely so interspersed amidst the 
tragic as to produce a unity of the tragic on the whole, without 
which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this is always 
managed with transcendent skill. The Fool in Lear contributes 
in a very sensible manner to the tragic wildness of the whole 
drama. "''■' Thus the mixture of tragedy and comedy is justified 
by Coleridge not simply on the grounds of an essential similarity 
in their natures, but also psychologically or functionally. It is to 
be noted that here the opposites are not left as metaphysical ab- 
stractions ; the principle becomes a means of structural analysis. 



3. Theory of Imitation 

The proper method of interpreting the classical doctrine of 
the imitation of nature had long been a bone of contention among 
critics, and it is not to be wondered at that the theory of imita- 
tion should occupy a considerable place in Coleridge's criticism. 
It is implicit in all his statements concerning man and nature, al- 
ready touched upon, and it is also developed in a way that brings 
it down, as will appear, to the reconciliation of the two opposites, 
hkeness and difference.^^ 

In his discussion of dramatic realism Coleridge's main tenet 
seems to be that stage illusion should consist in what he terms a 
negative rather than a positive judgment of reality : "The true 
stage-illusion . . . consists — not in the mind's judging it to be a 
forest, but, in its remission of the judgment that it is not a for- 
est. And this subject of stage-illusion is so important, and 
so many practical errors and false criticisms may arise, and in- 
deed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual delusion 
(the strange notion, on which the French critics built up their 
theory, and on which the French poets justify the construction 
of their tragedies), or from denying it altogether (which seems 
the end of Dr. Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, 



"Works, Vol. IV, p. III. 
" Works, Vol. VI, p. 464. 

" De Quiiicey's verdict on one instance of Coleridge's use of this for- 
mula has already been quoted. (See above, Chapter III.) 



Application to Literary Problems 51 

would lead to the very same consequences, by excluding what- 
ever would not be judged probable by us in our coolest state of 
feelings, with all our faculties in even balance), that these few 
remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if they should serve either to 
explain or to illustrate the point. For not only are we never ab- 
solutely deluded — or anything like it, but the attempt to cause the 
highest delusion possible to beings in their senses sitting in a 
theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds, which, feel- 
ing that they cannot aflfect the heart or head permanently, en- 
deavor to call forth the momentary afifections."'"' 

A copy of the external (that is, likeness without difference) 
which might result in positive illusion, or delusion, will never re- 
sult in art : "The artist must imitate that which is within the 
thing, . . . for so only can he hope to produce any work truly 
natural in the object and truly human in the effect."'" The 
illusion may be produced in spite of great deviations from the 
facts, in spite of gross improbabilities, provided the author can 
carry his audience with him by working in accordance with psy- 
chological laws and giving to the drama the inner consistency of 
imaginative fusion.*" Indeed, it is essential that there be difference 
as well as likeness. "It is a poor compliment to pay to a painter 



"Works, Vol. IV, p. 37. Cf. p. 73- 

" Works, Vol IV, p. 302. 

" Works, Vol. IV, p. 333. 

""'Each part should be proportionate, though the whole may be per- 
haps impossible. At all events, it should be compatible with sound sense 
and logic in the mind of the poet himself. . . . the consciousness of the 
poet's mind must be diffused over that of the reader or spectator ; but he 
himself, according to his genius, elevates us, and by being always in keep- 
ing, prevents us from perceiving any strangeness, though we feel great 
exultation." Works, Vol. IV, pp. 42-43. 

"Of all intellectual power, that of superiority to the fear of the in- 
visible world is the most dazzling. Its influence is abundantly proved by 
the one circumstance, that it can bribe us into a voluntary submission of 
our better knowledge, into suspension of all our judgmeni derived from 
constant experience, and enable us to peruse with the liveliest interest the 
wildest tales of ghosts, wizards, genii, and secret talismans. On this pro- 
pensity, so deeply rooted in our nature, a specific dramatic probability 
may be raised by a true poet, if the whole of his work be in harinony; a 
dramatic probability, sufficient for dramatic pleasure, even when the com- 
ponent characters and incidents border on impossibility. The poet does 
not require us to be awake and believe ; he solicits us only to yield our- 
selves to a dream; and this too with our eyes open, and with our judg- 
ment perdue behind the curtain, ready to awaken us at the first motion of 
our will: and meantime, only not to rfwbelieve." (Works, Vol. Ill, p. 564.) 



52 The Reconciliation of Oppositcs 

to tell him that his figure stands out of the canvass, or that you 
start at the likeness of the portrait."^" There must be a union of 
the two opposites ". 'Tmitation, as opposed to copying, consists 
either in the interfusion of the same throughout the radically dif- 
ferent, or of the different throughout a base radically the sarae."^'- 
"Imitation is the mesothesis of Likeness and Difference. The dif- 
ference is as essential to it as the likeness; for without the dif- 
ference, it would be Copy or fac-simile."^^ 

Coleridge uses this principle in explaining symbols : "Hard to 
express that sense of the analogy or likeness of a thing which 
enables a symbol to represent it so that we think of the thing 
itself, yet knowing that the thing is not present to us. Surely on 
this universal fact of words and images depends, by more or less 
mediations, the imitation, instead of the cop\ which is illus- 
trated, in very nature Shaksperianised — that Proteus essence that 
could assume the very form, but yet known and felt not to be 
the thing by that difference of the substance which made every 
atom of the form another thing, that likeness not identity — an 
exact web, every line of direction miraculously the same, but the 
one worsted, the other silk."^^ 

It is the interfusion of difference in the likeness that partially 
accounts for the pleasure resulting from Wordsworth's portrayal 
of rustic life. "The second [exciting cause] is the apparent nat- 
uralness of the representation, as raised, and qualified by an im- 
perceptible interfusion of the author's own knowledge and talent, 
which infusion does, indeed, constitute it an imitation as distin- 
guished from a mere copy."^* 

It is the larger interpretation of imitation inherent in the par- 
adoxical conception, that makes Coleridge tolerant in his judg- 
ment of the opera; "All the objections to the opera are equally 
applicable to tragedy and comedy without music, and all proceed 
on the false principle that theatrical representations are copies of 
nature, v\'hereas they are imitations."^'' 

The consciousness that both likeness to nature and unlikeness 
are necessary, gives rise to some interesting concrete comments 
on Shakespeare's plays. In the notes on Richard II, Coleridge 



™ Works, Vol. VI, p. 470. 
"Works, Vol. Ill, p. 421. 
'' Works, Vol. VI, p. 468. 
■" A. P., p. 87. 
" Works, Vol. Ill, p. 396. 
'■' A. P., p. 82. 



Application to Literary Problems 53 

justifies rhyme, which had long been criticized as unnatural, by 
calling attention to the fact "that the speakers are historical, 
known, and so far formal, characters, and their reality is already 
a fact."^" And again he notes "the skill and judgment of our poet 
in giving reality and individual life, by the introduction of acci- 
dents in his historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and 
not histories.""' Of King Lear he writes: "It may here be worthy 
of notice, that Lear is the only serious performance of Shak- 
speare, the interest and situations of which are derived from the 
assumption of a gross improbability ; whereas Beaumont and 
Fletcher's tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some 
out of the way accident or exception to the general experience of 
mankind. But observe the matchless judgment of our Shak- 
speare. First, improbable as the conduct of Lear is in the first 
scene, yet it was an old story rooted in the popular faith, — a thing 
taken for granted already, and consequently without any of the 
effect of improbability. Secondly, it is merely the canvass for 
the characters and passions, — a mere occasion for, — and not, in 
the manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, perpetually recurring as 
the cause, and sine qua non, of, — the incidents and emotion."^* 

4. Problem of Unity 

The synthesis of unity and variety issues, in Coleridge's con- 
crete applications of the principle, in the conception of organic 
unity. If the objective expression is the result of a "growth 
from within," that is, if the formal is the expression of the vital, 
then the unity of the resultant work will be the unity of fusion 
rather than combination, there will be intricate interrelations, 
even "evolution" of thought. Of Jonson Coleridge notes that "in 
all his works, in verse or prose, there is an extraordinary opu- 
lence of thought ; but it is the product of an amassing power in 
the author, and not of a growth from within."^" Again, "Shak- 
speare's intellectual action is wholly unlike that of Ben Jonson or 
Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter see the totality of a sentence 
or passage, and then project it entire. Shakspeare goes on creat- 
ing, and evolving, B. out of A., and C. out of B., and so on, just 
as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, 



" Works, Vol. IV, p. 122. 
" Works, Vol. IV, p. 128. 
■^^ Works, Vol. IV, p. 134- 
=' Works, Vol. IV, p. 254. 



54 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

and seems forever twisting and untwisting its own strength.""" 
"In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next naturally ; the mean- 
ing is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through 
the dark atmosphere ; yet, when the creation in its outline is once 
perfect, then he seems to rest from his labor, and to smile upon 
his work, and tell himself that it is very good. You see many 
scenes and parts of scenes which are simply Shakspeare's dis- 
porting himself in joyous triumph and vigorous fun after a great 
achievement of his highest genius."*'^ 

It is evident from these quotations that the reconciliation of 
unity and variety involved the reconciliation of many other funda- 
mental pairs of opposites. When the objective unity is conceived 
as the result of a growth from within it means the reconciliation 
of the subjective and objective, man and nature, the formal and 
the vital ; and in the last quoted comment on Shakespeare there 
is clearly implied the union of rest and motion. In certain other 
instances the reconciliation is between the past and the future : 
in the notes on Hamlet Coleridge remarks that Shakespeare's 
opening scenes often "place before us at one glance both the past 
and the future in some effect, which implies the continuance and 
full agency of its cause.""- The "anticipations" evident in the 
character of Richard "illustrate his care to connect the past and 
future, and unify them with the present by forecast and remin- 
iscence.""^ 

I think we may say of Coleridge's applications of the princi- 
ple to these specific problems that they are of theoretical as well 
as of interpretative significance. The metaphysical conceptions 
that were always at least in the background of his consciousness, 
served to sharpen his critical insight, and in so doing justified 
their existence ; but the combination of the metaphysical theory 
and the concrete observations resulted in a criticism that does 
more than deepen the layman's appreciation of the works criti- 
cised. In Coleridge's analyses that are based upon the principle 
of the Reconciliation of Opposites, there are many suggestions for 
the theorist. The extent to which Coleridge deserves credit for 
originality in these suggestions is not my problem. The theorist 
may seek them elsewhere if he will ; in the meanwhile, they are 
here — and quantities of them — and in a most alluring form. 



»° Works, Vol. VI, p. --.0^. 
"'Works, Vol. VI, p. 438. 
»= Works, Vol. IV, p. 147. 
" Works, Vol. IV, p. 121. 



CONCLUSION 

Coleridge's use of the principle of the Reconciliation of Oppo- 
sites is in a sense out of date. His Oppdsites are, in the main, 
metaphysical concepts rather than mechanical forces or other 
scientifically real elements. And as with dualism in general, so 
with such a principle as this, — the present day is rather more con- 
cerned with the countless actual oppositions and reconciliations 
disclosed by a scientific analysis of life than with the metaphysical 
formulae that seem to symbolize them. Of the two forms of the 
principle, the mechanical and the metaphysical, considered in the 
introduction to this paper, the mechanical is distinctly more 
"modern," construing the world, as it does, according to the 
formula Action — Reaction, defining Art in the terms of psycho- 
logical action and reaction, bringing out in the concrete work of 
art the actual structural oppositions. 

And yet, admirably as the mechanical form serves its purpose, 
it does so necessarily at the cost of certain elements of value found 
in the metaphysical form. It is difficult to express even rela- 
tively ultimate values in scientific and mechanical terms, for the 
mechanical construction of the universe is avowedly a means, not 
an end,^ and a means to an infinite number of individual ends 
that cannot be summed up in any general mechanical formula. 
It follows that in the mechanical form of antithesis there can be 
little suggestion of ultimate values. The terms are indifferent 
characterless units, that have even lost their distinguishing names. 
The oppositions and reconciliations of art, according to this view, 
are not those of Man and Nature, the Vital and the Formal, 
the Individual and the Universal (all significant concepts), but 
those of forces or structural elements, conceived as identical 
units opposed only spatially. Even in De Oufncey's formula 
cited above — "the electrical kindling of life between two minds" 
— the minds are any two minds, that is, scientific units. It 
is true that in all antithesis there is balance and indifference. 
The terms of even the metaphysical antithesis are losing their 
traditional values. But they retain at least their individualizing 



' See the closing paragraphs of the Introduction. 



56 The Reconciliation of Opposites 

names, and these serve to express the new vahies being acquired ; 
whereas in any mechanical Ijalance of forces the value must be 
taken on faith — it is not expressed. It is evident then that the 
more modern form of the principle cannot give the immediate 
suggestion of values, the sense of quality, of something ultimate, 
that characterizes the metaphysical form. 

It will be necessary, of course, to "reconcile" the two forms 
by using each as a criticism of the other. But it has not been my 
purpose in this paper to carry the process of reconciliation very 
far; my attempt has been simply to define and analyze Cole- 
ridge's uses of the principle and in so doing indicate to some 
slight extent the significance of even the out-of-date metaphys- 
ical antithesis. 

As appeared when the matter was viewed from the logical 
standpoint, the principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites indi- 
cates an interest in art as art that characterized Coleridge's time. 
Moreover, the use of the principle, especially in its metaphysical 
form, was thoroughly characteristic of Coleridge ; not simply the 
reconciliation, but also the positing of the opposites, was with 
him what might be called a "constitutional" habit, thoroughly in 
keeping with the generally recognized nature of his philosophi- 
cal thinking. In his unsystematic applications of the principle to 
life and to art Coleridge used it, on the one hand, as a general 
formula for all experience, taking real delight in the mere dis- 
covery of its applicability, and on the other hand, as a norm, as 
a means of indicating the beauty and the wholesomeness of the 
ideal, and rather incidentally of implying the defectiveness of 
much of the actual. With its immediate suggestions of ultimate 
values and with its admirable adaptation to corrective uses it 
served excellently as a standard. Coleridge's use of the princi- 
ple in aesthetic theory and literary criticism sometimes showed, 
as we should expect, confusion between the mtaphysical or logi- 
cal and the psychological or scientific standpoint, but ordinarily, 
whichever the standpoint, it found expression in much valuable 
criticism. It issued, especially in his Shakespeare criticism, in 
suggestive analyses of dramatic character and situation and in 
many hints as to the essential nature of the dramatic element. 
Moreover, in accordance with the law of dual meanings involved 
in all antithesis it served to indicate the larger and in general 
psychologically sound interpretations of the fundamental aesthetic 
concepts and of such critical doctrines as those of tragedy and 
comedy, imitation, and unity. 



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